How Noble In Reason
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash. The Head Auror thinks Voldemort's magic is coming from the cellars of Malfoy Manor. Harry agrees to investigate. He's not happy about being made to investigate via formally Courting Draco, but he has little choice. COMPLETE.
1. Benjamin Binks Is an Idiot

**Title: **How Noble In Reason

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco, background Ron/Hermione

**Warnings: **Flangst, a bit of sex, profanity. Ignores the epilogue.

**Rating: **mild R

**Summary: **The Head Auror thinks that there's Voldemort-like magic in the cellars of Malfoy Manor. Harry agrees to investigate. The Head Auror thinks Harry should formally Court Draco Malfoy to get close enough. Harry _doesn't _agree with this, but he doesn't have a lot of choice.

**Author's Notes: **This will be a short story, eight or nine chapters. In some chapters the angst is stronger than others, but it's a light story for the most part. The title is a line from _Hamlet._

**How Noble In Reason**

_Chapter One—Benjamin Binks Is an Idiot_

"What is this about, sir?" Harry hoped that his tone was brisk enough. You had to use a certain amount of briskness with Head Auror Binks; otherwise, he might think you actually cared.

Benjamin Binks glanced up at Harry. He had one hand hovering protectively over a file on his desk, and the first thing he did was look out the door behind Harry's shoulder. "No one saw you come in here?" he asked, lowering his voice into a mysterious hiss. "You told no one why you were coming?"

"No, and no, sir," Harry said, and settled into the chair in front of Binks's desk, though he stayed seated on the edge so that Binks wouldn't think he wanted a long, comfortable chat. "It's easy for me to get away with that, since I don't have a partner."

Binks wasn't distracted enough to miss the edge in his tone. He gave Harry a stern glare—well, as stern as he could be when he was still trying to watch the corridor, too. A one-eyed glare wasn't very frightening. "You know that the reassignment of Auror Weasley was inevitable."

Harry started to argue that he hadn't known that at all, that he and Ron had always planned to be partners and had functioned well together for three years, and then cut himself off with a sigh. _Never get involved in a row with the Head Auror, _he repeated to himself. "Well, anyway, no one saw me."

"Good." Binks waved his wand, and his door shut as if on a string, Silencing Charms springing into place. He was proud of that spell, though Harry couldn't see why. The Head Auror's secretary would see anyone who tried to listen in on his conversations through the door anyway, and a permanent ward on her desk disrupted concealing magic like Disillusionment Charms. "Read this."

The file was thin, as was usual with new cases, so Harry didn't take long to read it. Only one phrase was important, anyway. He glanced up and blinked. "You're certain of this, sir?"

"As certain as one can be." Binks looked at him cunningly and tapped the side of his head. A seemingly permanent bulge poked through his light brown hair where he tapped. Office legend said that he'd been knocked on the head years ago and maintained the wound because he considered it the embodiment of his genius. "Of course, we'll need you to provide the _official _confirmation, as it were, heh?"

Harry smiled politely and returned to his reading, this time the second, in-depth scan that would tell him if he'd missed anything important.

It didn't seem so. The report was so simple in the first place as to be hard to mistake. An Auror doing a regular investigation of Malfoy Manor had noted powerful Dark magic coming from the direction of the cellars. She had been trained in the Ministry's relatively new way of recording such spells, and had used the notation to good effect, then come back to the Ministry and compared her notations to the ones already on file.

The only ones they matched were the notations done by those with some memory of Voldemort.

Harry started to raise his hand to touch the lightning bolt scar still present, in faded form, on his forehead, and then remembered that Binks would expect him to do that and one of his life purposes was frustrating Binks whenever possible. He dropped his hand back to his lap and looked at Binks. "The notations are imprecise, sir. You know that."

He didn't need to say that use of the notations alone had led to a widow who'd bought a mildly illegal lust potion being arrested as a former Death Eater. The notations depended on individual perception of the power, resonance, and lingering form of Dark magic. The Auror who'd arrested the widow had apparently thought lust potions and Dark Marks resembled each other.

The widow was still suing the Ministry, the last Harry had heard.

"Yes, I know that," Binks said, putting his inflection in the wrong places. Harry wondered if this was going to be one of the Head Auror's notorious bad days, where he tied the nearest Auror to a chair and interrogated them relentlessly in an attempt to get them to reveal the secret all-powerful Coalition of Seven Dark Lords they _must _be reporting to. He started to ease his hand towards his wand, but Binks was babbling on instead of trying to cast spells on him. "But think about it, Potter. Voldemort was living in Malfoy Manor that last year. Isn't it _possible _that he left some artifact behind? Perhaps even something that can resurrect him?"

Harry blew out his breath in annoyance. Binks was like a stupider Mad-Eye Moody, but sometimes he was right by accident. Though Harry had never heard him say the word "Horcrux," he'd latched onto the idea that Voldemort might have trusted his immortality to artifacts years ago and refused to let it go.

_Sometimes, paranoia and stubbornness can combine to look a lot like intelligence, _Harry thought, and answered, "Yes, sir. It is. And of course it has to be investigated." He was the only one for the job, too, he knew that. He was the only one who would be able to say for certain what Voldemort's magic felt like. It was a sensation he still felt in his dreams.

"Good." Binks poked a finger at him. "What do you know about the current situation of the Malfoys?"

"Er." Harry checked the file again, though he already knew that didn't say anything in particular. But it was a good idea to appear less competent than you were, more dependent on the Head Auror's information, so that he wouldn't suspect you were going around and doing things behind his back. "Not much, sir. I think that Lucius Malfoy was arrested and tried, but the Wizengamot didn't have enough evidence to convict?"

In fact, he was certain that part was correct. Harry had stood by in case he was needed to give testimony for Narcissa or her son, but their cases had never come to trial. Hearing how they had saved the Savior's life was enough for the Wizengamot to quietly drop charges.

"That's correct," said Binks, with a nod that went on too long. "Ridiculous, of course, since Lucius Malfoy had the Dark Mark and Voldemort was living in his house, but there you are. Another failure of our corrupt system."

_Like you, _Harry thought. Binks had only got the Head Auror position because of nepotism in the Ministry; he was the great-grandson of the current head of the Wizengamot.

"And no one has seen Lucius and his wife since they went on a quiet 'holiday' to Italy and never returned." Binks let out a sigh that rattled the office door. "The Italian Aurors refuse to extradite. Of course he's paying them."

Harry nodded politely, and then said, "But Draco Malfoy is still living in the Manor, sir? Has anyone approached him?"

"He refuses to cooperate with the Aurors on principle," Binks said, without even a mysterious nod. So it might be true for all Harry knew, rather than a projection or fantasy of the Head Auror's mind. "He lives in the Manor by himself and holds ridiculous parties every day."

"Well, we could sneak into the parties," Harry said.

"Not when you're the only one who can identify Voldemort's magic," Binks retorted, quickly and, for him, cleverly. "And I don't want my Aurors doing anything illegal that will give the Malfoys _another _loophole to wriggle through. No, you have to enter openly, legally, and with Malfoy's complete compliance."

Harry braced himself when he saw the gleam in Binks's eye. _Here it comes, some new insane plan._

But nothing could have prepared him for Binks saying, calmly and with every appearance of happiness, "I want you to start formally Courting Malfoy."

"_What_?' Harry spluttered. Some of the spit from the splutter went far enough to soak the case files on the other side of Binks's desk.

"A formal Courting involves sending gifts and tokens of admiration to the other person, starting a process that will culminate in marriage," Binks began to explain, apparently thinking Harry's exclamation was one of ignorance instead of disbelief.

Harry held up his hand. "I know what a Courting is, sir." Ron had eventually ended up marrying Hermione that way, after years of dancing around her after the war. They'd known they were in love, thanks to the Battle of Hogwarts, but they had taken as long about the "best" way to get married as they had about declaring their love in the first place, especially since Hermione found most of the pure-blood customs barbaric. "But I can't—that just involves lying to Malfoy, too."

"But not _illegally!_" Binks said in triumph.

Harry put his hands over his face. "Sir," he said, "you can't really expect me to do this."

"You're bent," said Binks. "He's a bloke. I don't see the problem."

Harry looked up, opened his mouth, thought about the effort it would take to explain to his Head Auror that being bent didn't mean he wanted to shag every man under the sun, and then shut his mouth again.

"Will the Auror Department compensate me for the gifts that I'll need to buy?" he asked. He was going to end up doing it anyway, so he might as well make a good go at it. He might try to capture Malfoy's attention with gifts that he could actually use and value even after the deception was revealed.

"Yes," Binks said. "Of course. How could you ask such a thing and not think the answer would be positive?"

Harry made one more attempt to break free. "Are you _sure _that I need to do it this way, sir? I've been receiving extra classes in Concealment and Disguise. I could try sneaking into the Manor and locating the source of this magic, at least enough to tell us whether it's really something we need to be worried about—"

"Tell me," Binks said, with a mean little smile, "has anything you've learned in Concealment and Disguise taught you how to cover that scar?"

Harry sighed. "No, sir." The scar resisted glamours, ordinary makeup, spells that were meant to change the shape of his face or make it uncertain in the memories of people who looked at him, and even Notice-Me-Not Charms. It took full-out concealing magic like Invisibility Cloaks or Disillusionment Charms to hide it, and Harry doubted that Malfoy Manor would have wards weak enough to let him get away with that.

Binks nodded. "Then you'll Court him, and you'll get into the Manor and investigate, and you'll arrest him."

"Not if there's not actually anything there, or if he doesn't have anything to do with it," Harry countered.

Binks stared at him. "But of course he will."

Harry shook his head, stood up, and left the office. The Head Auror never minded a little rudeness as long as he could interpret it as being in accord with his commands, which this was. Harry knew it was better to go and indulge his temper elsewhere than sit there arguing any longer.

He didn't want to do this. He knew how much the Courting tradition meant to pure-bloods, because he'd seen how tenderly and seriously Ron picked out Hermione's gifts. Even if it meant nothing to Harry, even if he could do this in the pursuit of his job and not feel bad about it when Malfoy found out the truth, Malfoy could be devastated when he found out.

But there was no choice. Harry _had _to investigate anything that might offer the slightest chance of Voldemort coming back, and stop it.

Then Harry stopped in the middle of the corridor and stared at the far wall. He would have banged his head against it, but he didn't feel quite that angry with himself. Being around the Head Auror had the tendency to affect one's brain.

_Of course. What an idiot I am._

There was no way that Malfoy would accept the gifts. He knew what a Courting process was supposed to look like, and he would know Harry's was false. So he would return the first gift with a rigid letter of refusal, and Harry could show the evidence to Binks and demand that the Head Auror let him try something else.

Harry shook his head, smiled in relief, and then went to his office. He would need to think of a perfect first gift: something that Binks would acknowledge as having put in good effort, but which Malfoy would see through. By the time he settled into his chair, Harry had decided that the right one would be something too extravagant. Why would Malfoy trust his boyhood rival spending a lot of Galleons on him?

It was something. It would make Binks's stupid plan fail, and Harry could investigate with _normal _methods and prove that the Auror who'd recorded the resonance of Dark magic from Malfoy Manor had probably been wrong in the first place.

There was no way that Voldemort could come back. Harry _knew _that he had destroyed all the Horcruxes. So Malfoy harbored Dark artifacts, but he might not even know about them. His father had probably left him heirlooms that Malfoy had locked away in dark corners and never looked at again, because he had taste.

It did cause Harry to pause and wonder why he was so insistent about Malfoy being innocent, if only in his own mind. Six years ago, even three years ago, right after he got out of Auror training and was seeing Dark wizards everywhere, he would have been eager to believe Malfoy was trying to resurrect Voldemort.

Then he shrugged. _Because I do think he's innocent, and he never was strong or evil enough to want to bring Voldemort back. Because he suffered from the bastard as much as I did, and Binks's theory makes no sense._

_Because I hate being forced to waste time on this._

* * *

"I can't believe he actually made you do it, mate." Ron sat on the corner of Harry's desk, watching him wrap the first gift.

"I know." Harry rolled his eyes at his friend. "But I hope this will be the only exchange we need to make. After all, Malfoy won't actually _accept _this gift. Why should he? And the note I'm sending along with it is enough to make a dog sick."

Ron grinned. "Let's see."

Harry held out the letter, and then went back to carefully tying Cushioning Charms on the gift—a clock ornamented with gold and opals, its face diamond, with silver hands ticking across it. The traditional Courting gifts _had _to be delivered by owl, which meant Harry was taking no chances with the clock falling and shattering before his personal owl, Vulcan, could actually get it to Malfoy.

Ron hadn't made any gagging noises yet. Harry looked up. "What, did I make it so sickly that you can't make it to the end?" he asked, only half-joking. He'd tried to think of the stickiest words possible. Binks had to read it and be convinced, but there was no way Malfoy would be.

Ron looked at him with a pale, thoughtful face instead, and said nothing. Harry sighed. "I know. I hate violating the Courting traditions, too. I know how much they mean to you. But Binks is determined not to let me investigate in any other way until I've tried this, and that means I have to bring the ridiculous thing to an end as soon as possible."

"I don't know, mate," Ron said slowly. "This is actually a realistic-sounding letter. Not bad, at least," he added hastily when Harry opened his mouth. "But you're just not any good at deception."

"Yes, but I'm good at exaggeration," Harry muttered. It was the reason that Binks had used to split up their partnership, claiming that Harry had exaggerated the dangers in one too many cases to justify pulling Ron out when he had only minor wounds instead of pursuing the suspect all the time.

Ron smiled as he had to at the joke, but his eyes were earnest. "Here, read it again, and try to think about it as a stranger's letter," he said, holding it out to Harry. "What would you say?"

Harry sighed impatiently, picked up the letter, and began to read through. He knew what it said, of course. That was the _point_.

_Dear Malfoy: _

_I hope that you'll forgive me intruding after so many years. I feel that things have changed enough that we can approach each other as strangers, or at least acquaintances. At the same time, the way I think of you is based on what I knew of you, and especially what I knew of you during the final year of the war._

_When I think of the way that you saved my life when I came to Malfoy Manor and you had to know it was me, I feel a deeper connection to you than a life-debt can explain. And then you came after me in the Room of Hidden Things. Yes, it was stupid, because you had to know that I never would have come with you to You-Know-Who, but it was brave. And let's just say that the way I carried you out of the Room of Requirement has featured in my dreams more than once._

_Because of the healing and changing work that I hope time has done for you as well as me, I'm sending a clock for my first gift, and asking for your permission to formally Court you._

_Harry Potter, Auror._

"Oh, come _on_," Harry said. "It's ridiculous. 'After so many years?' 'A deeper connection to you?' I don't talk like that."

Ron raised an eyebrow. Harry was convinced that Hermione had taught him to do it. "Is he going to know that?"

"And look!" Harry thumped his finger on the second paragraph, and then realized it might be better to turn the letter around so that Ron could see. "Calling Voldemort You-Know-Who? He _knows_ I don't do that."

"Or he'll read it as an attempt to be _sensitive_—" Ron pursed his lips together and fluttered his eyelashes "—to any issue that he might have with Voldemort's name."

Harry hit Ron on the arm and shook his head. "He has to be smarter than that."

"Why?" Ron asked in interest, swinging his legs like a little kid. Harry was about to tell him he looked like one, but Ron went on. "I know that you're into trying to see the best of everyone and assume that everyone changed after the war and all that—personally, I think you've spent too much time reading those books Hermione reads—but this is _Malfoy _we're talking about. He never saw any _reason_ to change."

"It's not just the books," Harry said weakly, and Ron snorted. "Look, it really isn't, all right? Those cases—I know Dark magic corrupts the mind and we still have to bring them in, but how can you look at how _pathetic _they become as a result of that magic and not pity them, at least a little?"

Ron put his head on one side. "Please tell me that you pity the ones who dwindle into paranoid people hiding in cellars and not the ones who use Dark magic to rape and murder."

Harry grimaced and shook his head. He still worked cases that made long showers necessary after they were done. "But I can at least see the difference between motivations now, and Dark magic isn't the only way that someone can go wrong. Remember the Sizemore case?"

Ron rolled his eyes. "You'll never stop pounding it into my head that you were right about that one, were you?"

Harry gave him a grim little smile. The Aurors had been called in on the Sizemore case because the murderer had done deeds so violent that the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had assumed he _must _be using Dark magic. But no, it was merely someone who hadn't ever learned that other people were real, and so thought they might as well die and suffer for his entertainment. Harry had met a surprising number of people like him in the last few years. Sometimes the magic they practiced had made them worse, but not always.

Ron had been on the side of the Dark magic. Harry had suspected from the beginning that no such thing was involved, and he had been right.

"Anyway," Ron said, dragging the conversation back to the major point with an effort that Harry appreciated for its sheer magnitude, "you don't know that Malfoy has changed. He might not care about this Courting. He might accept the letter and the gift for the sheer pleasure of laughing at you."

"And he might not," Harry said.

"Just don't say that I didn't tell you if he turns out to be worse than ever," Ron said, standing up. "I don't mind giving ordinary people the benefit of the doubt, but this is _Malfoy._"

Harry saluted him solemnly. "I'll remember. Are you going home to Hermione?"

Ron nodded, then hesitated. "You're welcome to come along if you want. Leave all this Malfoy nonsense until tomorrow, and maybe by then you'll have thought up a way to make Binks drop it."

Harry waved a hand. "No, that's all right. You and Hermione enjoy your snogging." He knew Ron and Hermione didn't _mean _to make him feel like an outsider right now, when they'd still only been married for two months, but he felt that way anyway. He mostly met them now in public situations where Hermione would keep the snogging to a minimum.

Ron flushed, but said, "You ought to find someone of your own, Harry. Only not this way." He nodded to the clock and the letter and left, whistling before he even got out of Harry's office.

Harry sat back in his chair and eyed the clock and the letter, then looked at his own watch. He reckoned that Binks hadn't left the office yet, and he could still talk to him and try to convince him not to use this stupid plan.

But Binks had changed his mind only once in the history of the Department, and then only in the face of an order passed down from the Minister himself. Harry mentally shrugged, told himself that his wording _was so _sentimental enough to give Malfoy sugar shock, and gathered up the gift and the letter to take to Vulcan.

* * *

It was only two hours later that Vulcan came and found him at home, carrying a single envelope in his beak and wearing an expression of extreme smugness that meant he wanted extra treats. Harry gave them to him and checked twice to make sure that the envelope wasn't a Howler and didn't bear curses before he opened it.

The handwriting inside was unmistakably Malfoy's, and the tone seemed to be his, too.

_Potter:_

_Your letter and your goals are different enough to be amusing. Consider yourself invited to Malfoy Manor at eight tomorrow evening. I would add that you should wear dress robes, but since I sincerely doubt that you own or could afford any that would match my tastes, I will forgive your inevitable violation of common decency._

_I give you permission to Court me._

_Draco Malfoy._

Harry shook his head and sat there for a minute thinking about what Malfoy's motivations behind the acceptance of the Courting process might be, because he couldn't possibly _believe _in it. Amusement value, as he said in his letter? Desire to keep an eye on Harry, who he must know would be assigned to investigate the case if he was actually harboring Voldemort in his house? Defiance of the Ministry? Determination to find out what Harry's transparently stupid Courting attempt actually hid?

Any way it worked out, Harry decided, he looked forward to seeing Malfoy, with a surprising amount of pure curiosity.


	2. Draco Malfoy Is Hiding Something

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two—Draco Malfoy Is Hiding Something_

The moment he stepped out of the fireplace at Malfoy Manor, Harry felt his scar begin to burn.

He caught his breath in surprise and stood still, glad that there was no one to see him in this small, dim entrance room except the house-elf who had taken his cloak. He pretended to rub his forehead and yawn so that anyone who came around the corner unexpectedly wouldn't think he was specifically touching the scar. Yes, the skin was rougher and warmer beneath his fingers than it had been in years.

_Fuck. _Only now did Harry realize how little credence he'd given to the idea that there really could be something of Voldemort's here. He took a deep breath to conceal his disappointment and looked up.

"Master Harry Potter is being all right?" the elf squeaked, staring at him in concern.

"Yes, _is _Master Harry Potter?" came a familiar, sarcastic, _missed _voice, and Malfoy stepped around the corner.

Harry could only stare. The voice was the same, and he had expected the face to be, too. Malfoy still occasionally got his picture in the papers for the sheer length and wildness of his parties, and whenever Harry had watched the photographs, it had had only a few superficial differences.

But now, seen close up, Malfoy's chin was more pointed, his face thinner, and his face more precisely framed by the neatly-cut blond hair than Harry had ever seen it in school. He looked like a fox, rather than a ferret. Ron would probably have said that wasn't much of an improvement, but for Harry, it was startling.

He'd been expecting the boy he knew in school, Harry realized as he held his hand out. This wasn't him. It made him at once more curious—why _had _Malfoy accepted the Courting in the first place?—and more wary—Malfoy might have changed enough to want to resurrect Voldemort after all.

Malfoy caught his hand in a quick grip, eyes traveling down Harry's body as if searching for concealed weapons. Harry gave him a weak smile. "Sorry for the dress robes," he said. "I tried not to offend common decency too badly." His robes were dark green and didn't have any fucking lace on them the way that Ron's robes in fourth year had, and that was about the best that could be said for them.

"You did better than I would have thought you could," Malfoy murmured. Then his eyes came back to Harry's, and a sharp smile twisted his lips to the side. He looked like he was in pain, Harry thought, and suspected Malfoy didn't smile often. "Now. Where is my second Courting gift that I graciously allowed you to bring me?"

Harry bowed, glad that that was required, because it would hide the expression of distaste on his face, and then held out the wrapped present. Malfoy shredded the tissue paper as if he had claws and gazed down at the thing within expressionlessly. When he glanced up, Harry was surprised to see his face was flushed.

"Why. Bring me. This?" His words were separated by short, furious puffs of air.

"Er," Harry said, wondering if he had deeply wounded Malfoy already. He had drawn on his memories of the Courting gifts Ron sent Hermione, but that might not have been enough. "The second gift is supposed to be a living thing, or a model of a living thing. That is."

"_This_," Malfoy said, turning the gift around as if Harry didn't know what the intricately carved marble flower inside looked like, "is a narcissus."

_Oh_. Harry relaxed a bit, though he had to admit that he was disappointed Malfoy hadn't denounced the whole thing as a deception and thrown him out. He had the confirmation that something of Voldemort's lingered here. He could have discovered enough to justify an arrest from the outside. "I know," he said. "It's in honor of your mother."

Malfoy, Harry discovered, had acquired a trick of lifting his eyelids high so as to gradually show off the eye beneath. It was effective at signaling his feelings, and he did it now. Harry shuffled his feet.

"You _dared_," Malfoy said, in what was not a question.

Harry nodded. "She helped me in the Forbidden Forest that day Voldemort tried to kill me—did kill me," he said, watching closely to see if Malfoy flinched at all when he mentioned Voldemort's name. "I thought it was appropriate."

Malfoy only lowered his eyes to the narcissus again. His hands clenched on it convulsively. Harry _did _hope he wouldn't throw it at the wall and shatter it. It had cost a lot of money, and if Malfoy wasn't going to accept it, Harry would just as soon take it back to the shop he'd got it from.

But Malfoy touched the narcissus's petals once, with what looked like indifference, and gave it to the house-elf with instructions to take it elsewhere. Then he held out his arm. Harry stared at it, then at him.

Malfoy sighed. "If you are Courting me, then you should escort me into the party," he explained in a calm voice. "You won't know the people there, but never mind. I don't know half of them."

Harry watched Malfoy covertly as he took his arm. Malfoy didn't have perfect control over his feelings, Harry'd seen that already. And he could see the way Malfoy's smile twisted again when he spoke about not knowing the people. He didn't think the boredom that spread over his face like ice over a freezing pond a moment later was feigned.

_So he holds these enormous parties, and he has Voldemort in his cellars, and he apparently isn't happy about either one, _Harry thought, then checked himself. _I only have evidence for the first, not the second. But I do wonder what the point of these parties is, if not to entertain him._

The anteroom led out into a short corridor which flowed to two delicate doors ornamented with climbing bronze vines and leaves, life-like enough to make Harry believe in them for a moment. Malfoy nodded to house-elves standing on either side of the doors, and they swung them open to the accompaniment of a chord of faint, sweet music.

The room beyond that was so large Harry was surprised it fit in the house. It was oval-shaped, too, and the walls were covered with mirrors, which made Harry's head swim for a moment. The people dancing and chattering and playing some kind of complicated game with darts in the corners turned to face them, and their reflections in the mirrors moved all at the same time. Harry clutched at Malfoy's arm as at an anchor and heard Malfoy chuckle gleefully.

Most of the partygoers wore robes of bright colors: shimmering sapphire, brilliant scarlet, a pink that hurt Harry's eyes. Only here and there was someone in black. One woman wore the mask of a bright bird-of-paradise, and the train of her robe blossomed into a peacock's tail. The man with her had robes that mimicked the green of the tail. Harry saw witches who looked young enough to attend Hogwarts with plunging necklines and wizards of the same age with trousers that barely covered their arses. He shook his head in confusion.

"Ah, yes, you can't be expected to play man of the world, can you?" Malfoy murmured. Then he raised his voice. "Please welcome Harry Potter, ladies and gentlemen. As you can see, he's Courting me."

Harry didn't think it was _that _obvious, when they'd merely entered with their arms entwined, but the crowd made a wave of shocked gasping noises and promptly bowed or curtsied. Then they began to swarm them.

Harry had thought he would be out of place here, with nothing to say and no idea of what to do, but as they surrounded him with blank masks and blanker smiling faces, he actually relaxed. He _did,_ in fact, know how to show to advantage in front of a crowd who all wanted a small piece of him instead of the truth. The Ministry still required it of him when he captured someone notorious, and every year on the anniversary of Voldemort's death, _everyone _required it of him for twenty-four hours.

So he talked about the weather in sly ways, and hinted about the secrets of his job that he wasn't allowed to talk of further in slyer ones, and made jokes when he thought he could get away with it about his superiors in the Ministry. People hissed and hooted and laughed in delight, and tapped him on the wrist and the elbow, and told him how lucky he was to be getting away with a notoriously choosy man like Draco Malfoy. And Harry beamed and nodded and talked about how he _was_ lucky, absolutely.

Finally the crowd drifted away a little, and Harry could take a breath, and turn to see where Malfoy was. His biggest fear was that Malfoy might have taken the chance to signal to someone about the Voldemort magic, and he wouldn't have seen it.

But Malfoy stood next to him as if nailed there, staring. Harry could make nothing out of the expression on his face, though he thought it better than the blankness so many of the guests showed.

"Yes?" he asked, when Malfoy had only gone on staring for some time.

Malfoy shook himself as if coming out of sleep and gave that twisted smile that, this time, apparently tried to wrap halfway around his face. "Upstaging me at my own party," he murmured. "What _will _you think of next, Potter?"

"I did _not _fucking do that," Harry said, reminded in an instant of all the reasons he had ever disliked Malfoy. "You were the one who insisted that I come to the party, and you know it's as much of a social coup for you to be seen with me as the other way around. You must have known what would happen. So don't complain."

Malfoy once more raised his eyelids. Harry wondered where he had learned that. He could see ways it would get fucking creepy after a while.

Then Malfoy held out his arm and said, "Let's dance, then."

Harry winced. _I hate this. I am going to think of some way that I can murder Binks without being detected and do it as soon as I get back to the Ministry. And then I'll become a master criminal and no one will ever be able to track me down, and I won't have to worry about things like hurting Malfoy's feelings with a botched Courting._

He wistfully put the fantasy to one side and met Malfoy's gaze. "All right," he said. "But I'm not a very good dancer."

Malfoy cocked his head. "You must have known you would be required to dance as part of the Courtship."

Here was another moment where Harry would have given anything for Binks's plan to have failed, because he had to pretend that he was sorry he wasn't a good dancer and couldn't give Malfoy the full experience, instead of hoping that Malfoy would be offended and allow him to end this ridiculous charade.

"Yeah," Harry said. "But it's not as though I decided to take dancing lessons when I decided to Court you. It was something I only thought of later."

Malfoy gave him a slow, secret smile. Harry felt his stomach warm and drop a few inches.

_Oh, _shit.

Of all the problems he'd thought he'd have with this game, an honest attraction to Malfoy wasn't one of them.

"Why did you decide to Court me?" Malfoy asked, and drew Harry towards the dance floor. Harry went reluctantly, trying to at least make sure he wouldn't trip over his robes on the way there. There was no guarantee once he actually started dancing, of course. "I want to hear every detail."

Harry winced again, but he managed to keep this one internal. He had thought of a few lies, of course, but that didn't matter when he was a good liar and would discredit them as soon as he tried to tell them.

That left a bunch of things he had thought of that were true, but not connected with the Courting. At least he would be able to say them with sincerity. In the absolute fuckup this evening had become, he thought that was enough.

"Well," he began, "I'd been curious about you for a long time since Hogwarts. I wondered if you'd changed at all." They were in the middle of the dance floor now, and Malfoy had halted, reaching out to put his hands on Harry's shoulders. Harry tried to mimic the same thing with him, and Malfoy gave him a patient look and readjusted Harry's hands so that they were on his waist. Harry flushed, but tried to keep talking normally. "The newspapers said that you hadn't, but you know how they lie."

"Curiosity?" Malfoy asked. "That's all?" They started gliding back and forth, and Harry hoped the whole dance was like this. Simple side-to-side steps, he could handle.

"I'd hardly base the whole Courting on simple curiosity, would I?" Harry demanded. "No. I think—I think that you _must _have changed. And I have to admit, my dreams are tangled up in this, too."

"Dreams." Malfoy's face had a genuine smile on it for the first time. "The sort of dream where you wake up crying out my name?"

Harry coughed, flushing more, and then, _just _then, of course, because the universe hated him, the music changed and he found himself tripping over the hem of his robes. Malfoy clucked and wrapped an arm around his waist to keep him upright and steady. "You try to go too fast, and lead too much," he murmured. "This is supposed to be relaxing music. _Dance_. Move gently. Let me."

_I'd be only too happy to let you, _said Harry's happy, exuberant, inappropriate mind.

Harry shook his head, sighed, and said, "No, not that kind of dream. Where we're flying out of the Fiendfyre, and you're leaning over from behind me and saying something. It was something important, but the dream wouldn't let me remember what."

Malfoy's face changed and grew still, the way it had when he looked at the carved narcissus. Then he said, dryly, "In reality, Potter, I screamed. There. This way. Yes, that's right."

_Apparently I'm attracted to his voice when it's soft like that, _Harry thought in despair as a thrill ran through him at the last words. "I know," he said. "That doesn't make any difference to the dream." And it hadn't. Harry had actually had that dream. He'd sat up in bed afterwards, but in puzzlement, not arousal, as he tried to work out what it meant.

Malfoy guided him closer with one hand in the small of his back. Harry tried desperately to ignore his groin. He'd never been attracted to suspects before, and so, although he saw no point in denying that he suddenly was, he _also _saw no point in letting to grow so that it interfered with his ability to act on this case.

"Besides," Harry murmured, "I've learned well enough in the past few years that the people I sometimes think of as evil, aren't always. I started thinking about what that meant for you during the war. You're like them. You didn't have much choice, or you made one decision you thought was for the best and found yourself on a road that you couldn't turn back from."

Malfoy looked as if he'd bite. "_Don't _pity me, Potter."

"But I do," Harry said, heart beating rapidly. He hoped that was because he was excited that this particular disappointment might make Malfoy reject the Courting altogether, and not because of how close he was to Malfoy. "That's part of it. Pity, and curiosity, and wanting to know more about you, and seeing your photograph in the papers, and thinking you might have changed, and having watched Ron use the Courting to get closer to Hermione. Yeah, a lot of modern pure-bloods use the Courting when they already know who they want to marry, but Ron told me it didn't used to be that way. People would use it with relative strangers. It's a good way to get to know each other."

Malfoy stared some more. Then he put on that unreadable expression again. "Many people would say that you already knew more than enough about me," he murmured.

"And I've told you why I think they're wrong," Harry said. "Will you tell me why you _accepted _the Courting? I didn't think you would, to be honest."

"Who wouldn't take the option of being Courted by the great and brilliant Harry Potter?"

"_Don't_," Harry said in turn. He stopped in the middle of the dance floor, ignoring the music and Malfoy's attempts to tug him on. He didn't give a fuck if he got in the way of the other dancers. "Don't give that brittle smile. It's a lie."

Malfoy blinked. "What?"

"You smile in this way like your face is about to crack." Harry started to reach out, to demonstrate by tracing the curve of Malfoy's lips, and then realized what he was doing and snatched his hand back. There were some boundaries he just wasn't willing to cross, Binks or no Binks. "It's false. It's a lie. I _know _that you didn't accept for that reason. Maybe some other people would feel honored, but you wouldn't. Why?"

Malfoy caught Harry's right wrist in a crushing grip, but Harry had dealt with worse, especially from people who had honestly wanted to kill him. He met Malfoy's eyes and waited.

"You're wrong," Malfoy said, voice odd and deep. He cleared his throat and spoke more like himself—well, like the man Harry had heard so far this evening. "You're wrong. I am honored."

Harry sighed. "Look, if you won't give me your honest reason, I don't see why the Courting should go ahead."

His throat burned as he said that. _Yes. Honest reasons. Hah._ But Malfoy surely couldn't let the Courting go forwards. _Surely. _What would be the point? The whole reason Harry had expected him to refuse was their past, and Malfoy would have had no reason to find that neutralized, even if Harry did. Harry wasn't his House and Quidditch rival anymore, but he was an Auror, part of the group that had chased Malfoy's parents away.

Malfoy said something utterly unexpected, though.

"I dream of the fire, too," he said, and another smile slid over his mouth, wild and sly. "And I wanted to find out what you tasted like." He tugged Harry forwards with one hand behind his head.

Harry had time to think about what was going to happen, and make a decision. He had to go ahead with the Courting. Binks refused to see reason. Harry didn't think Malfoy would believe him ever again if he backed out now. Malfoy was definitely hiding something in the cellars that had to do with Voldemort, whether or not he knew it, which meant Harry had to retain access to Malfoy Manor at all costs.

And he wouldn't mind finding out what Malfoy tasted like.

So he opened his mouth, and their tongues brushed together. That sent a feeling through Harry so strong that he shuddered. He leaned in, wishing briefly that they were against a wall or something so he wouldn't have to worry about falling, and got the first taste of Malfoy's mouth.

It was wet, but not in the way that Cho's kiss had been wet. This was the best kind of wetness, and Harry moaned, and he didn't even care if everyone at the party heard him.

Malfoy gasped, and then pushed Harry gently away. Harry managed to go. He licked his lips and averted his eyes, aware that he was flushing, not knowing what to do about it.

He had never been a good liar. _Never. _So he had kissed Malfoy the way he would kiss someone he was honestly interested in, not knowing what else he should do, and now they were—here.

"Ah," Malfoy said at last, and there seemed to be a whole world of meaning compressed into that little sound.

"Um, sorry," Harry said, because he thought he knew what half that world of meaning was, and it was all bad. He wiped at some sweat above his eyes and then managed to focus on Malfoy again. "I didn't—I should have asked before I tried to shove my tongue down your throat like that. I—is this in accord with the rules of the Courting? Ron didn't do anything like that with Hermione."

Malfoy grimaced horribly. "Please spare me the anecdotes about your little friends, Potter."

Harry straightened, on the defensive again, and feeling as though he had emerged from a dream rather like the one about the Fiendfyre. Sure, it made sense in the dream for Malfoy to speak to him, and it made sense while he was kissing Malfoy to think he liked him, but outside certain special moments like that? "Fine," he said. "You don't need to hear about them ever again if you release me from the Courtship."

Malfoy arched his head haughtily, looking at Harry down his nose with great effect even though there was less than an inch of difference in their heights. "Cowardice, Potter?" he whispered. "Second thoughts? Surely you know that, by this point, only _my_ free choice can break off the Courting?"

"Yeah," Harry said, glaring, "and if you despise my friends and despise the way I kiss, and _know _the horrible way I dance, I can't think of any reasons that you would want to keep going."

Malfoy shook his head. He had a look now, with his lips clamped shut, that Harry recognized from Hogwarts and the way he had looked before Quidditch games. _He always lost those games, _Harry reminded himself, but that wasn't entirely comforting.

"I don't deserve to lose time or sleep over your cowardice," Malfoy said. "You'll continue. And you'll return tomorrow evening for a private dinner, just the two of us, at six. Bring the third gift then. I trust that you'll know what to get me. It has to be a symbol of the bond we share, remember." He raised an eyebrow and started to saunter away.

"You're _mad_," Harry said after him. He didn't care if everyone in the party heard. It wasn't like they would know what the argument was really about. Either none of them would know about the feeling of Voldemort's magic in the cellars because Malfoy didn't know, or they knew and were part of whatever secret plan Malfoy had and wouldn't help him anyway. "This is really stupid for us to be doing."

Malfoy turned his head without stopping his stroll. "Yes, but I have your attention focused on _me _now," he said, so softly that Harry was certain he was the only one who heard.

While Harry was still gaping, Malfoy vanished into the middle of a group that included the woman with the peacock tail on her robe. A thrill of delighted laughter followed his passing a moment later.

Harry left to get his cloak from the house-elf, grateful they'd come such a short distance so that he wouldn't get lost on the way back. He stifled the temptation to kick anything until he was in the waiting room again, where he kicked the poker. The house-elf leaped back and stared at him in a mixture of fear and disapproval.

"Master Harry Potter is not to be doing that," it squeaked.

"Shove the poker up your arse," Harry retorted, and threw the powder into the flames, yelling out his destination. As he whirled along, he thought of all the ways this situation was stupid and ridiculous and _stupid_.

He was spending a lot of money on Courting gifts. Binks would doubtless be delighted and think tonight was "progress." He was lying to Malfoy, who, on the off-chance that he was sincere and had real reasons for accepting the Courting, would be hurt when he found out. Voldemort was coming back. He was attracted to a wanker. If Malfoy wasn't sincere, then Harry had once again played into his hands and given him something to laugh at.

He staggered out in his drawing room and sagged into a chair, scowling at the wall.

_I hate my life._

Especially because, despite all the reasons against it, including that Malfoy was probably lying, his mind kept returning to the kiss and Malfoy's whisper about dreaming of the fire.

_My body and mind _both _have no sense of what's appropriate._


	3. Harry Potter Is Trying Hard

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three—Harry Potter Is Trying Hard_

Harry leaned back in his chair and stared at Binks. He had just described what he'd done and said at Malfoy Manor last night, and he had expected Binks to agree that he was right and there was no way the Courtship could go ahead. They knew enough to send in Aurors, didn't they? Malfoy might not cooperate, but they didn't need his cooperation with a simple search.

Yes, Harry had thought he'd need to keep Malfoy's trust last night, which meant not sending in a raid, but the more he thought about it—and he'd thought about it for a long time before he fell asleep—the more he'd decided that a small breach of trust was better than a large one. There was nothing between him and Malfoy yet but one dance, one kiss. Harry could end it now, and they could both walk away unscathed.

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Binks, with a shake of his head. Then he stuck his head under the desk—because, Harry reckoned, a criminal spider might be hiding there. He straightened back up and tapped his wand on the desk as he stared at Harry. "You're obviously making progress. Got Malfoy eating out of the palm of your hand. What do you want to stop for?"

"We'd get more answers and preserve better relations if we told him the truth instead of lying," Harry said.

"I don't see that," Binks muttered. "Don't see that at all. He'd just resent us for forcing the Courtship on him and shut the door."

"We didn't force it on him," Harry said sharply. "He accepted for hidden reasons best known to him."

Too late, he realized what Binks had maneuvered him into doing, and scowled as Binks beamed, reaching across the desk to shake his hand.

"Just what I felt," Binks said happily. "You go on doing what you're doing, Auror Potter." He only called Harry "Auror Potter" when he wanted to flatter him. "I'm sure that you'll know how to do that best."

Harry left Binks's office with a headache that didn't diminish when he saw Ron jogging towards him. Ron paused and gave him an intensely sympathetic look, but still made the announcement Harry could practically see burning his mouth.

"Hermione's pregnant, mate!"

Harry blinked, and then reached out and pounded Ron on the back. "Congratulations!" he said, with only a single wistful thought (no more than that) about the family _he _would probably never have. "When's the baby due?"

"Next year," Ron said, smiling as though he already held it. "In March, probably. Mum's over the moon. Dad's beside himself. And Percy is trying to give me advice." He rolled his eyes. Percy had married his latest girlfriend, Audrey, long before Ron and Hermione had worked through their Courtship, and had two daughters. He had also changed his tendency to lecture people about the Ministry into one to lecture them about their children. Harry knew he was a good man, but he thought he'd liked him better the other way.

"Ignore him, that's all you can do." Harry flung an arm around Ron's shoulders and steered him back to the office, hoping he could forget his own problems with Malfoy for a little while in Ron's happiness. "I hope Hermione's looking forward to it?"

Ron smiled. "Well, she will be, when she gets over the morning sickness."

They stepped into the office, and Ron gasped. Harry looked around in concern, wondering if someone had sneaked in and left anti-child propaganda on his desk or something.

No. Someone had left a huge _bouquet _there instead. Harry stared at the tall white flowers in a glass jar of water for a long time before he realized they were lilies. He stepped away from Ron and extended his hand to touch them as if in a dream.

"Don't, mate!" Ron snapped. Harry looked back and saw that he'd whipped out his wand and was aiming it at the flowers. "They could be dusted with some sort of mind-control potion, and you'd miss it in all the pollen. We had a case like that the other day."

Harry sighed. "I doubt that's it. I have wards around the office that react to things like that, you know."

Ron blushed. "Oh, yeah." He'd helped Harry put the wards up. He cautiously slid his wand back into his pocket, ducking his head and squinting as though he assumed the lilies would reveal their dangerous nature from a different angle. "Then what are they?"

"A present from Malfoy, I think." Harry moved around the vase, and yes, there was a card attached to the side of it. He pried it off and noted the silver filigree letters on the front, as well as the snowy strength of the paper, which probably cost more than he made in a week. He flipped the card open.

_ To Harry Potter, who honored my mother. May these flowers do the same for him._

Harry shut the card and stared at the lilies. Yes, of course they were from Malfoy. He recognized the handwriting, but really, he had _known _the minute he saw the flowers. He reached out and completed the gesture Ron had interrupted this time, and the white petals whispered against his fingers, even softer than he had imagined.

"Malfoy shouldn't be giving you presents," Ron said in bewilderment. "You're the one who gets _him_ things, and he lies back and accepts them. Or boots you out on your arse," he added in a more hopeful tone. He turned to Harry. "Has he booted you out on your arse yet?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't understand," he admitted quietly. Yes, the rules of the Courting were strict, and if they were at all important to Malfoy, it didn't make sense that he was violating them.

_On the other hand, _he thought, his Auror senses coming to the forefront now instead of the part of him that was charmed and touched by the gift, _maybe this is a sign that he knows it isn't real. He wants me to play along. He's counting on me not noticing the violation of the rules, or what it means, but instead wants to trap me with kindness._

Harry had to admit that it was a trap that would work better than many others. But he didn't intend for it to succeed.

"What are you going to do with them?" Ron had his head tilted to the side and one eye squinted, as though he wanted to imitate Binks's paranoid habits.

"I don't know," Harry said. "But getting rid of them might look suspicious. I can't believe that Malfoy doesn't have spies in the Ministry that would tell him how I received the flowers."

Ron stared at him. "I didn't think of that," he said. "Maybe this is a test, then? To see what you do?"

"It's as likely an explanation as anything else," Harry said irritably. He wished Malfoy had been obviously evil or obviously innocent; he was beginning to wish he had never taken this bloody case. Malfoy's behavior might have a bunch of explanations or none. Maybe he just wanted to fuck with Harry as revenge for what Harry had done to him during school. "I'll keep them for right now." He cast a Preservation Charm and moved the vase to one side so that he could get at his paperwork.

"Are you sure that you can handle this, mate?"

Harry looked up in surprise. Ron was lingering by his desk, and he sounded…concerned. Harry wasn't used to hearing that from Ron unless he was injured or obviously in distress. He shook his head. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"I saw that letter," Ron said quietly. "And you're continuing with the Courtship despite all the objections against it."

"Binks didn't give me much choice," Harry pointed out, wondering if Ron's happy news had blotted the knowledge of what Binks was really like from his mind.

"You could fight it," Ron said. "You're probably the Auror in the Department who would have the best chance, since you have standing and fame outside it. You could make the papers listen to your story."

"And expose what we know about Voldemort's magic in Malfoy Manor," Harry said flatly. "No, thanks."

"You could tell the story without that," Ron said. "Just Harry Potter being forced to do something against his will would make a good story, and there are reporters out there more reasonable than Skeeter, who would let you set the terms. If you _really _wanted to end the Courtship, that would be the way to do it."

Harry narrowed his eyes. "And you think the fact that I haven't done that yet is a sign of—what? That I want the Courtship to keep up?"

"I think you're happy to have an excuse to be close to Malfoy, yeah." Ron shook his head, probably about whatever had appeared in Harry's face. "Listen, mate. I agree that you weren't panting after him. But now that an excuse to be close to him has crossed your path, I don't see you giving it up, either."

"I'm just doing my job," Harry muttered, and tried not to think about the private dinner that Malfoy had invited him to that night. Technically, that _was _within the rules of the Courtship; the man or woman being Courted would determine when they wanted to see the person pursuing them, and they could ask for other specific things, although the rules mandated the formal gifts. Harry already knew what he would buy, and Binks had said again that morning that the Ministry would compensate him. That wasn't the problem.

No, the problem was how much he was looking forward to that bloody dinner.

_I have to prevent Voldemort from coming back, _Harry told himself firmly, _and this is the best way to do that. If I like it, or if I'm anxious because I feel as though I'm really auditioning for a part in Malfoy's life instead of only pretending, it's natural. Malfoy is mostly innocent now, I think. I don't want him to get hurt._

But even that could probably be more evidence for the attraction that Harry had noticed the night before.

He rolled his eyes and dived into his paperwork, where, even when he had to rewrite a report and submit it for the fourth time, there was less to annoy and harass him than in the thought of the Courtship.

* * *

"Ah, Potter. Right on time."

Harry nodded and handed his cloak to the inevitable house-elf. It might have been the same one who'd welcomed him to the house last night; Harry didn't know. He'd never been good at telling elves apart, with the obvious exceptions of Dobby, Winky, and Kreacher.

He clenched his teeth against the thought of Dobby and reached out to shake Malfoy's hand. Malfoy didn't offer it. Harry raised an eyebrow and spoke his thoughts, because that was what Malfoy would expect from the unsubtle, boorish Harry Potter. "What, changed your mind about welcoming me?"

"Of course not," Malfoy said in a quiet, intense voice. They were in a small dark room that Harry couldn't see well past the glow of the fire, but he didn't think it was the room where they were eating in; it wasn't formal enough. That meant Malfoy _could _have changed his mind. "I want you to do something other than shake my hand."

Harry opened his mouth to ask what, and then stopped. He knew perfectly _well _what. He took a single deep breath, leaned forwards, and kissed Malfoy gently on the lips, wondering if Malfoy would pull away from a kiss that he hadn't initiated himself, wondering if he had made a mistake after all, for so many reasons.

Malfoy parted his lips at once instead, and Harry found their tongues sliding together. He took a lurching step forwards, since being so distant from Malfoy was putting him off-balance, and Malfoy chuckled and dragged him closer with a firm hand on his back.

Harry decided in an instant that he didn't care if Malfoy was trying to trick him. He was going to kiss honestly, as he had done the other night, the only way he could. So he was the one who locked his hands behind Malfoy's back and pulled them closer still, as close as they had been when they were dancing, and took control of the kiss, bending Malfoy back towards the table in the center of the room.

Malfoy gasped as if he was surprised, and his hands scrabbled at Harry's spine and shoulders before relaxing. Harry touched Malfoy's cheeks and gums and teeth and palate with quick, flickering motions of his tongue, and then licked at Malfoy's in turn, trying to get him to follow the pattern into Harry's mouth.

But Malfoy only shuddered and pulled back, using an elbow on the table and one in Harry's gut to support himself. Harry grunted in discomfort and stepped away, though only after he made sure that Malfoy was actually standing upright and wouldn't go crashing to the ground. Then he scrubbed at his face and tried to readjust his hair, futilely.

"Didn't expect that, did you, Potter?" Malfoy asked, with a shaky laugh. Harry told himself to remember that, that the laugh was shaky, when he glanced up and found Malfoy studying him with what looked like a perfect, composed mask.

"No," Harry said. "It's against the rules of the Courtship that say you're supposed to hold back and let the other person beg for a kiss and a touch long before you give in. I know that you're breaking the rules already, since you set those lilies to my office, but I don't know why." He paused, then added, "All I can do is the best _I _can, and that means playing my part in the Courtship and being honest at the same time."

His stomach squirmed as he spoke those words. He wasn't being honest. He should tell Malfoy the truth right now, apologize, leave the gift he'd brought tonight with him, and then march out of this house and tell Binks that he wasn't doing this anymore. It was what he would do if he had the slightest bit of integrity.

Except…

Except that his scar was still burning. And it wasn't the soft, slight twinge that he sometimes got when he passed through a place where Voldemort had spent a lot of time, such as certain parts of Hogwarts. This was a steady, real burning. Harry had glanced into the mirror last night and seen his scar flaring redder than it had been, the center of a large scarlet patch that, luckily, his fringe mostly covered.

This was serious, and he would just have to swallow what he hated and keep on working on it.

Malfoy was silent for a few minutes, watching Harry as though he expected another speech, another revelation. Then he shook his head and said, "You _did _study the rules of the Courtship before you started it." His voice was dazed.

"I had an advantage because I saw Ron and Hermione using it," Harry said. He felt oddly defensive, though he shouldn't have. Malfoy was giving in, believing his lies, and that was what he wanted, wasn't it? "And anyway, it doesn't matter if I'm not pure-blood. This ritual matters to _you_, and it was the one I chose."

"Indeed it was," Malfoy said softly, and then stepped closer with a fluid movement that Harry resolved to keep in mind, just in case they had to duel later. "I'd like my gift now."

Harry grinned. This was the one part of the evening that he thought he'd genuinely enjoy, especially since it seemed that Malfoy wasn't going to say anything about the lilies or why he was breaking the rules. He dug into a pocket and opened the silvery paper of the package before Malfoy could do so.

Malfoy started at the Snitch lying in Harry's palm without expression, then glanced up at him with lowered eyelashes. "This symbolizes the relationship that we shared in Hogwarts, I suppose? Because we both played Quidditch?" There was something that might have been disappointment beneath his voice, crushed so flat that it was difficult to make out.

Harry shook his head. "It symbolizes the relationship that we have now. Try to touch it."

"_Try_," murmured Malfoy derisively, but he reached out towards the Snitch.

It sprang into the air and loosed an angry buzz. Then it began to swoop around the room. Malfoy waited until it came near, like a cat who didn't want to waste effort running after an energetic mouse, and lunged out.

It avoided his hand easily, twisting in midair to do so, and then buzzed back until it hung above Harry's head. He reached up to it, and the Snitch jigged sideways and flung itself up to hover underneath the ceiling.

Malfoy turned to Harry, though he kept one eye on the Snitch as if he expected it to attack the back of his head. "Explain, Potter."

"We're never going to entirely understand each other," Harry said softly, holding those cold grey eyes. They weren't as cold as they wanted to appear, or as emotionless. Harry wondered if Malfoy was aware of that. "We avoid confession or simple contact—being caught. We'll dodge and weave around each other, and if we land or meet, it'll be unpredictably."

As if proving that, the Snitch suddenly dropped and landed on the back of Malfoy's hand for the briefest moment. Then he it flew off again before he could even reach out to grasp it.

Malfoy watched Harry for a bit longer, as if he trusted that the Snitch would avoid him. Then he smiled and reached out one hand. Harry grasped it, glad that Malfoy would actually let him shake it now.

Instead, Malfoy bowed his head and kissed Harry's knuckles.

Harry gasped. He hadn't known that the skin on the back of his hand would be sensitive. Why should he? It never had been before.

But lots of things were different with Malfoy than they ever had been before.

Malfoy raised his head and stared at Harry with bright eyes, one thumb moving over his knuckles in an absent way. Harry shook his head and cleared his throat, deciding to speak when Malfoy kept silent. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to lessen the unpredictability of our meetings," Malfoy said, and slid a strong, confident hand around his wrist, leading him to the table. Apparently they were eating here after all.

Harry sat down in a daze, which he only partially woke up from when Malfoy clapped his hands and had house-elves deliver the food to them. It all seemed to be sweet, Harry noticed, from bread that they dipped in honey to fluffy meat pies with large flaky crusts that broke apart and shattered in his mouth. He licked his lips and shook his head, patting at his mouth with a napkin. He hoped Malfoy wouldn't insist on another kiss before he left tonight. Harry was certain that there would still be bits of the food stuck in his teeth.

Malfoy ate in silence, only pausing between bites to watch Harry intently. Harry was reminded of the time that he'd had to sit down and eat with a Potions master who'd brewed several draughts that reduced people to madness. It was a necessary delaying tactic until the rest of the team could get there, and in any case it hadn't harmed Harry, but the Potions master had watched him the same way, as if every bite contained a different potion and he was waiting to see when Harry would collapse or start foaming at the mouth.

Maybe this was a test, like the lilies and the kiss and breaking the rules in general. Harry continued eating stolidly, and had to admit that he enjoyed the meal other than the silence. The Malfoy house-elves knew how to cook.

When he'd put his plate aside, Malfoy suddenly leaned forwards and asked, "You know what the end of the Courting is?"

Harry was able to give him a withering stare, strengthened by the minutes that had passed since Malfoy last touched him. "I told you I had some familiarity with the rules. I wish that you would trust me that far." Guilt woke up in the back of his head to whisper, _Even if you can't trust me any farther._

Malfoy gave him a faint smile. "And you really think that you could marry me, Potter? It's one thing to dally with me, or buy me pleasant gifts, and another to decide that we'd share the same house and bed for years on end."

Harry winced, and hoped that he'd concealed that well enough. Of course he hadn't thought about that, because he never intended to let the Courtship get that far. It would cut off before the end, when Harry either discovered the source of the burning behind his scar or couldn't fight against his conscience anymore and told Malfoy the truth.

"I hadn't considered marriage," he admitted, playing with his cup and staring at the tablecloth. "I thought—I _wanted _you, but I didn't think all that much about the end of the Courting and what would happen then."

Malfoy rose smoothly to his feet and moved around the table. Harry stood up to meet him, not wanting Malfoy to think that he was simply passive and would accept whatever Malfoy offered. The Snitch had been a warning against that, but Harry intended to reinforce it any way he could.

"Honest, as well," Malfoy breathed. "Do you know how long it is since I met someone attractive and _honest_? The people who come to my parties have sometimes spoken of Courting me, but they give me pretty gifts—which I keep, of course—and then tell equally pretty lies. They act as though it would be no hardship to be married to me, and hide the ways in which they flinch back from the idea. You make it clear that it hasn't become real to you."

"And you find that attractive?" Harry spluttered. He knew that he had just learned something important about Malfoy and why he was bored at his parties, though Harry still wasn't sure why he kept hosting them in the first place. Perhaps he thought that he was likely to find someone he wanted if he kept at it long enough.

"Yes, of course I do," Malfoy said. He was stroking the inside of Harry's right wrist, and Harry was shivering, and that was _not _the way it was supposed to work. He had never been sensitive there before Malfoy, either. "It may not have been what my parents taught me to value, but I am more than they were. I'm more than the way they raised me." His eyes had a diamond-like cast for a few minutes. "You must believe that as well, or you would never have initiated the Courtship in the first place."

Before Harry could answer, he bent down and fastened his mouth in the place on Harry's wrist where his fingers had just been stroking.

Harry gasped and stuttered. This wasn't—it shouldn't feel so _good_, it was just a bit of heat and moisture, but it did, and Malfoy's tongue stroked and lapped again and again. Harry's right foot stamped in spite of himself, and he could feel his cock rising to the point that he was absurdly afraid it would bump into Malfoy's chin.

_I can't simply lie back and take this. I have to show Malfoy—_

_No, I can't lie back and take this because I don't deserve this. It's the kind of tribute that should be offered to a genuine lover, not a liar._

With an effort that seemed to involve transforming his body from jelly to bone, Harry broke free. He stepped back and lowered his hands to his sides, breathing hard. Malfoy lifted his head and licked his lips as though removing the last traces of a delicious dessert, his eyes unguarded and not cool at all now.

Harry wanted to back further away from the fire in those eyes that might incinerate him.

"Shy?" breathed Malfoy. "How wonderful."

"N-no." Harry hated the fact that he stuttered over words then. He took a deep breath and said, "Uncertain. Look, I _told _you, I jumped into this, and now I see that I really shouldn't have. I need to think more about marriage as the end of this. I want you, yeah, I like you a lot, but I didn't _think _enough."

Malfoy's mouth lifted in one of those smiles that went sideways, but this time it looked natural rather than twisted. "And yet, you can't break off the Courtship unless I agree. How marvelous. I do enjoy power." He turned his back in a leisurely manner, as though showing off his arse, which Harry ogled before he thought about what he was doing. "I'll see you again two days from now, at that party for the opening of the new library."

"_What_?" Harry demanded. "I just told you that I don't think I can marry you, and your response is to meet me in public?"

"Hmmm, yes." Malfoy's eyes absolutely shone as he glanced over his shoulder. "By way of forcing the issue, you see. And the fourth gift? It must be the most beautiful thing you can buy, Potter. Not what you think will match _my_ tastes, but what will match yours."

"Which are horribly underdeveloped compared to yours," Harry muttered, hoping desperately that having to be in contact with Harry's hideous definition of taste would influence Malfoy against him. How was this all going so _wrong_? Malfoy was supposed to be snappish and suspicious and not take this seriously, so Harry could find a different tactic instead. He wasn't supposed to act as though Harry was desirable. The Courtship had come out of the blue for him. How could he _know _that Harry was what he wanted?

Malfoy laughed. "Perhaps they are," he said. "But I'll teach you better when once we're married. The elves will show you out. Good night, Harry."

He strode out of the room, and Harry tried to drop back into his chair and put his head in his arms.

He missed and hit the floor, since the elves had already removed the chair.

He sat there until the elves prodded at him to get up, because he felt this was painfully symbolic of his whole life right now.


	4. Hermione Granger Is Expectedly Smart

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Four—Hermione Granger Is Expectedly Smart_

"I don't see why you don't simply make up an excuse for him to take you into the Manor's dungeons, or cellars, and then cast spells that would let you identify the location of that magic." Hermione spoke as if the whole situation was simple and easily settled.

Harry glared at her, and then yawned. He hadn't got much sleep last night. He had lain awake fighting battle after mental battle about whether it would be unforgivable if he stopped investigating Malfoy now, and to whom—Malfoy, or the people who would be hurt if Voldemort managed to return to life. "Because we're meeting in public today, not in the Manor," he said. Another yawn interrupted him as he spoke and made his words less impressive than he wanted them to be. It didn't help to look at Hermione after that and see her smothering a smile. "Besides, what excuse could I give? 'I've always been fascinated by dungeons, Malfoy, could you let me see yours?'"

Hermione laughed. "Do you know what gift you're going to get him today?" she asked, instead of responding to his serious objection. Harry rolled his eyes.

"Of course," he said dismissively. "The gifts are the easiest part of this. Now, do you have any _actual _advice for me?"

Hermione simply stared at him. Harry tolerated that for a few minutes, then leaned forwards and snapped his fingers in front of her eyes.

"Harry!" Hermione jerked her head back, making the chair she sat in rock. She seemed to prefer the chairs in his office, unlike Ron, who would perch on the corner of Harry's desk no matter how ungraceful it made him look. "What was that for?"

"I'm here so that you can tell me what to do, rather than entertaining your fetish for staring off into space," Harry snapped, and then got up and prowled back and forth behind his desk. There was a file open on it, waiting for him, but he knew he wouldn't do a good job if he did try to settle down and read it. The Malfoy case was occupying his mind too much. "I have to break off the Courting soon if I'm not to hurt him, but that will hurt him, too, if in a minor way, I can't do that by the rules, and it will deprive me of a chance to investigate. I have to continue investigating, but that means hurting him more in the future and potentially not being able to discover anything much by the rules of the Courtship. Tell me what I should do."

"Why do you want _my_ advice so badly?" Hermione still looked angry about the fingers-snapping thing.

"Because I've asked myself what I should do again and again," Harry said frankly, "and there's no way around it. Both sides are too strong. I hope that someone who stands outside the situation will be able to see something that I can't, some option that I've overlooked."

Hermione smoothed a hand down her robes, but she didn't fool Harry. He could see the pleasure in her eyes. "I see," she said. "Well, that's very adult of you, Harry."

Harry snorted, and waited. He had found lately that Hermione really did react better if she was flattered, but he didn't want to overdo it in case she suspected. And ordinarily he wouldn't have tried to manipulate his best friends at all, just asked for their help, but this case was making him snappish and tired, and he didn't think he could take the lecture or the teasing that had been building up behind Hermione's stare.

Hermione folded her hands in her lap and gave him a direct look. "I was just thinking that the gifts weren't the easiest part of the Courting for Ron. He _agonized _over them. He sometimes delayed our meetings for days or weeks just so he could find the perfect one. And even then, there was a gift or two that didn't go over well," she added, with a reminiscent smile.

Harry envied that smile. He would like to be on the other side of this Courting, standing alone or by Malfoy's side—

_Right. That thought is impossible, and it'll only make me sour if I entertain impossible dreams or fantasies. _Harry shook his head and said, "That's only because Ron and I are different people. I'm sure that he probably found spending time with you the easiest part, whereas it makes _me _feel like I'm walking on nails."

"I only have a theory," Hermione said. "If you can find him gifts that please him so easily, then perhaps you're more in tune with his mind than you think. It shouldn't be that hard to gain his confidence, and find an excuse to investigate the magic you can feel in the Manor, if you apply the same amount of thought to it that you do to the gifts. Think about it. What would he like? What would he believe?"

Harry stopped pacing. Then he said, "That's very simple, Hermione, but very smart. I should have thought of that, but I'm not surprised that I didn't."

Hermione smiled at him and stood up to squeeze his arm. "Don't spend your entire Saturday in the office, please? Come by and see us tonight. It'll give you a break from worrying about Malfoy."

Harry kissed her on the cheek and watched her leave, but his mind was already busy churning away at another problem.

He had avoided manipulating Malfoy as far as possible because he wasn't good at lying. But perhaps he'd also avoided it because he knew he _could _be good at it, if he tried, and there were others ways to make Malfoy do what he wanted that didn't involve lying.

_It's as if I think I'm not really hurting him as long as all we do is speak to each other and kiss and eat meals together, _he thought, closing his eyes. _And that's false._

He had to go further, for the sake of all the people who would be hurt if Malfoy really was trying to raise Voldemort, even without knowing what he was doing.

He hated to go further because that empathy Hermione was talking about made him more reluctant to hurt Malfoy than he would be if he was stumbling around trying to find the right gifts and making a mess of the Courtship.

_This is such an idiotic plan. I should never have agreed._

Harry spent a moment thinking about curses he could use on Binks that wouldn't be noticed until a few years had passed, giving Harry the satisfaction of seeing them build _and _the satisfaction of not being caught. He would never do that, of course, but at least it gave him a different topic to spend his thoughts on.

* * *

"Ah, Potter. I was beginning to think that you wouldn't show up."

Harry grunted in response and didn't meet Malfoy's eyes as he held out the next gift, wrapped in a shimmering layer of silver paper. He was beginning his manipulation, and that was the best Hermione or Binks could ask of him, he thought. "I thought about not doing it," he said. "Being in public isn't really fun for me."

Malfoy's smile was sharp as he accepted the gift. "Do you think that everyone is delighted to see me, either, with my last name?" he asked. "I would trade my infamy for yours."

Harry glanced at him. "I don't see anyone casting you out of this particular celebration," he said. They stood on the steps of the new library that was to be dedicated in Hogsmeade, the first British wizarding library to be established outside the control of some particular family or institution like Hogwarts or the Ministry. People milled everywhere and spoke to each other, or stood in place, posing stiffly for photographs, or smiled into space as though waiting for someone to come up and ask them what they were smiling at. It worked, too. "They all care more about their reputations than yours."

Malfoy said nothing. Harry turned back to him and saw his eyes narrowed, his hands hovering over the gift as if suddenly afraid of what he might find inside the package.

_Good. _Harry was trying to act as if he were indifferent, or at least cooler, to Malfoy so that he would reveal more of himself. It hadn't taken him long to come up with the plan once he really thought about it, like Hermione said. Malfoy had never been able to stand being ignored, especially not by Harry, and he rejoiced in the power to make Harry react in ways he hadn't chosen, as he'd said two days ago. Apparent indifference would make him lunge past it and try to smash the walls so that he could make Harry react again.

It would work. It was the perfect plan.

It also made Harry feel like a tool, but he couldn't have everything.

Malfoy seemed to pause for long moments as if he was considering speaking words that would end the Courtship. Harry held his breath. _Let him. Please. It would be better for him in the long run. It would hurt him, but it would hurt him _less.

As if he had heard the thought, Malfoy shook his head and opened the package.

He stared at it for some time, fingers cradling the frame, and then glanced up at Harry with another shake of his head. "Where did you find this?" he asked quietly. "Why did you choose to give it to me?"

Harry leaned over so that he could look at the photograph, doing his best to keep a calm expression on his face. He was going to stick to the plan if it killed him, and sometimes he thought it might, if only with anxiety.

The photograph showed Malfoy leaning against a wall near a window, staring at the window as if he were examining the shutters. The light in the room wasn't bright, but enough to reveal a wistful expression around his lips, although he wasn't smiling. The pictured Malfoy shivered and hugged himself tighter, and then bowed his head. Harry could see his lips moving as if he were reciting a prayer or a strengthening litany to himself.

"It's a picture that was taken by a _Daily Prophet _photographer and given to the Auror Department because he thought you must be up to something," Harry said, with a little shrug. "Planning an assault on Gringotts was his favorite theory, for some reason. I bought it from him to hush him up and then kept it for a few years. I found it and had it framed when you demanded a gift today."

Malfoy stared at him. "That doesn't answer the question about why you gave it to me."

"Think of what the fourth gift is supposed to be," Harry said, and he actually managed a drawl that would have stunned Ron, Hermione, and almost anyone else who knew him. "Something that matched my taste, my sense of what's beautiful. Well?"

Malfoy passed his tongue across his lips once, hesitated, and then seemed to gather his courage and spring straight into what he wanted to say. "You chose this picture," he said, and tapped his fingers against the frame again. Harry wondered if it had been the wrong frame to buy. It was a simple silver square, and he hadn't thought the curlicue pattern along the top ostentatious. Malfoy would probably think it wasn't ostentatious _enough_, if anything. "And yet, you came here today and acted as though I was dirt you would scrape off your boots without a second glance."

Harry hesitated. He hadn't counted on a direct confrontation about his attitude.

And he _still _couldn't lie. But maybe he could discourage Malfoy by speaking the truth.

He shrugged. "I don't think I want to be married to you," he said. "I have to continue the Courtship as long as you say I do, but that gives you all the power and me none at all. I'm cursing because I put myself into this position."

Malfoy reached out and laid a hand on his arm, tracing one finger down the edges of Harry's muscles the same way Harry had traced the frame. Harry gritted his teeth and told himself not to react. It had to be as simple as showing up with a disdainful expression on his face in the first place, right? Even more simple, because the disdainful expression required some effort. This was _not _doing something.

"I wouldn't continue this Courtship if I didn't think we could be happy together." Malfoy's voice was quietly forceful. "I have no desire to be married to someone who hates me, either. Why would you think I did?"

Harry relaxed a bit. Malfoy's voice had taken on a familiar petulant tone. God forbid that someone think less of him than he wanted them to think, even if that estimation was based solidly on his own behavior.

"You bragged about the power the Courtship gave you," he retorted. "Excuse me for thinking you might want to go on exercising that power even if it would put you at a disadvantage. For _you_, the disadvantage might be small enough not to matter, but it's the other way around for me."

Malfoy was silent again. Harry waited for the expected reaction: a stiffening in his muscles, a stepping away, a cold expression on his face. Who would _want _to stay near someone who'd just made a bunch of impolite accusations about them? And wasn't Malfoy supposed to be focusing more on the curious glances they were getting, from all the people who wondered why Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy were together?

But nothing Malfoy did made any sense, as he proved by moving closer. "You chose this picture of me looking vulnerable as your most beautiful thing," he murmured. "I could take that as you wanting to see me broken-down. I could fling the picture from me, pouting, and declare that I never wanted to see you again. The Courting matches strength to strength. Your preference for my weakness is a bad sign."

Harry held his breath, and not just because Malfoy was leaning close. _Yes. That's it. Let him keep thinking in exactly that way, and I'll be well out of this mess._

"But I can also take it a different way," Malfoy said, and he had a sudden, brilliant smile that dominated his face like a comet the sky. "I can take it as you saying that you dislike my walls of dazzling, brittle strength. You see beneath them in a way that none of my 'friends' at my parties do, because you're looking at what's really there, not what will best accommodate you." He leaned against Harry's shoulder now and breathed gently into his ear, which made Harry fight hard not to shudder. "I told you the other day that I found someone attractive and honest the most powerful draw I could imagine. Add to that someone who doesn't despise me for looking weak, someone who wants to see more of me as I am. _Well._ Can you imagine, Harry, what that particular combination does to me?"

It was all going wrong, because Malfoy and the universe were sheerly backwards from what they were supposed to be. Harry cleared his throat and made a desperate attempt to salvage the situation. "I—you know I find you attractive, Malfoy. You know that I'd like to know more about you." That was all true, even if "wanting to know more about you" was mostly in the context of "wanting to know why the fuck my scar flares around you."

Malfoy nodded, calmly, his eyes fastened on Harry's face.

"I don't find your declarations of loving power attractive," Harry said bluntly. "I don't like the notion that you're the only one who can end the Courtship, and because of that, I'm doomed to follow along. If I decide that I don't want to be married in the end, what do I do? There doesn't seem to be a choice."

"Oh, but there is," Malfoy said. "Simply don't bring me the next gift. Turn your back on me. That's easy, isn't it?"

Harry stared. "But there isn't a provision in the Courtship for that," he said at last. "I read the books that Ron used. I'd know."

"It's a provision outside the brackets of the Courtship," Malfoy agreed in a strangely soft voice, lowering his eyes in what might be an attempt at being _demure_. "It means that you'll have to be rude and ignore the rules. The books were written with the notion of people who want to follow the rules in mind."

Harry stared at him some more. Malfoy had a faint, amused smile, and his eyes lingered on Harry, unmoving. Harry took a deep breath and tried again. "This doesn't make any sense. Why would you want me to Court you when I could break it off at any time?"

"For all the other reasons," Malfoy said without hesitation. "Someone who likes me, who wants to know what I'm really like, outweighs the potential pain of someone who breaks the rules. I value the Courting tradition, yes, but it's not the only part of me. I am more than what my parents raised me to be." He paused and tilted his head. "Would you like to know what I am?"

Harry's head nodded without consulting the rest of him.

"I'm someone who decided that the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff ideal of being in love might apply to me," Malfoy said, his hand pressing more heavily on Harry's arm. "I wanted that ideal to be true so strongly that I lay awake some nights staring at the ceiling and wondering what I would do if it wasn't. I made up fantasies about the perfect romantic hero who would find me and guarantee me a good life of endless sex, spoiling and pampering, and reading my mind when it came to what I wanted and needed."

Harry cleared his throat with an effort. "Not the perfect romantic heroine?"

Malfoy smiled again, and if it had a hint of the twist that Harry had seen in his other smiles, it was a charming one. "I may have set my sights on unattainable people in the past, but _that _aspect of what I wanted has never changed."

Harry shifted his weight and tried not to show that even that intrigued him. He had assumed, without thinking about it, that Malfoy couldn't seriously mean to finish the Courting because that would keep him from marrying a woman and having children. But if there was no chance of that… "Go on."

"You're a good listener," Malfoy said, his voice no more than a whisper of breath. Harry shrugged self-consciously, but Malfoy either didn't notice or ignored it. "Then I changed my mind. I realized that I would be bored if I conferred with someone whose only subject was me. I receive endless admiration and flattery from myself, and by that time, I was receiving it from people outside myself. There are other topics in life. Don't worry," he added, after a glance at Harry's face. "I assure you that I still adore myself regularly at the altar of my mirror every morning."

Harry laughed and then wished he hadn't. Malfoy's fingers tightened lightly, possessively, around his wrist.

"I wanted someone who would be like me, whose mind would follow mine in the paths of thought, who was good at potions and shared much the same background in Slytherin House."

Harry tugged at his wrist. "You _know _that I can't give you that," he snapped.

"And then there are times that you aren't such a good listener," said Malfoy, with a shake of his head. "I told you that I _did _want that. Not that I want that now. I changed my mind again, because the only two people I could find who might have matched me were Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott, and attempts to date both of them were disasters. I started to think that a small amount of difference might be a good thing.

"The people I meet at my parties aren't different from me in anything except preoccupations. All pure-bloods, all brought up in the same code of disdaining honesty and ethics because they might become weapons that are used against you, all interested mostly in the shallow concerns of pure-blood life: manners, scandals, clothing, children. And parties, of course. I want more than that. I haven't ever had a sustained conversation about honesty or ethics with anyone," Malfoy added, "but I can imagine that it would be interesting.

"Everywhere I turned, my fantasies crumbled, because I could find no exact replica of the person I sought in the world around me. I continued hosting the parties, and continue now, because I think I might still have a chance of meeting someone there who would suit me if I reduced my standards enough, and because it at least means that I go to bed with my mind full of noise and light and color."

"You're lonely," Harry whispered. He would never have guessed it from the way Malfoy had received him that first night and moved among the crowds, but it seemed the only solution that made sense now. And it matched with the vaguer impressions he had received from Malfoy's behavior earlier.

"Yes, of course I am," Malfoy said, meeting his eyes. "Even after I lowered my standards to the few that actually mattered—honesty, attractiveness, the willingness to listen and to accept me as I am—I met no one like that. And then you came hunting. Someone who knows me, who accepts my vulnerability, who must be lonely himself because so few people would date him honestly." He leaned in further, until Harry thought he was probably supporting more of Malfoy's weight than Malfoy was doing himself. "My perfect partner."

Harry wrapped his arms around Malfoy's waist and shut his eyes. He had no idea what to say. He only knew that his job had become harder, because Malfoy had taken the chance to trust him and would be wounded far more deeply now if Harry tried to back away. He might not even care that the Courtship was a sham, next to the loss of Harry's company and what it would mean to him.

_I wish we could have met outside the form of this ritual and got to know each other in some other way. I do wish that._

But it probably never would have happened, since Harry had assumed Malfoy must be shallow because of his parties and Malfoy wouldn't have shown this much of himself without some reassurance that Harry would respect him and care.

Harry sniffed Malfoy's hair once, and kissed his cheek before he realized what he was doing. Malfoy lifted his head, eyes intense, and kissed him back, but on the lips.

For a single moment, Harry wondered what the crowd surrounding them would think, and dreaded the click of cameras. Then he realized that Malfoy must have thought more about that than he had, simply because he cared more about the publicity, and if _he _wanted to take the chance, how was Harry to refuse?

He once again allowed his instincts to lead the way, kissing Malfoy as if this was his free, unconstrained choice, pressing hard enough to make Malfoy sway on his feet, and trying not to feel the honey-like weakness that ran down his limbs. He didn't know any other way _to _do this. And he vaguely thought that Malfoy deserved this much reward for what he had shared of himself, not because he had to, but because he wanted to.

It was only when the kiss ended and Harry's mind was his own again that he started worrying. He had tricked Malfoy into showing so much because of his pretended indifference. It had been Hermione's suggestion, sure, but he was the one who had put that plan into action, not her and not Binks.

It was going to be _his _fault if Malfoy ended up falling in love with him, or something even worse.

Malfoy took his arm. "Fuck the opening," he said, loud enough that heads turned politely away promptly turned back. "I want to take you home."

Harry licked lips that felt papery. "Don't you—I mean, I thought there was supposed to be a properly set-up meeting and a fifth gift?"

"I haven't played by the rules yet," said Malfoy, twisting Harry's collar in one hand. "And what I want most to do, I can't in front of anyone. I've spent the past few years being an upstanding little pure-blood citizen, hiding my desires for the sake of making other people comfortable. Come with me."

Harry took a deep breath, told himself that entering Malfoy Manor again might give him more of a chance to examine Voldemort's magic, and nodded.

He just hoped that he could keep his head, excuses aside, when Malfoy smiled at him like that, shy and wild and glittering like a second sun released into the midst of the world.


	5. Draco Malfoy Is Unfairly Seductive

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Five—Draco Malfoy Is Unfairly Seductive_

They arrived at Malfoy Manor. Harry couldn't actually remember whether it was by Apparating outside the wards and then walking up the path through the gates, or whether Malfoy had found a Floo connection somewhere and brought them in like that. Malfoy was kissing him most of the way, and he couldn't look up or around without being drawn back into the kiss.

By the time he was fully conscious again, Harry found his back against the doorframe of a room he hadn't seen before, while Malfoy ripped single-mindedly at his clothes. He'd already popped three buttons and torn a long strap of cloth from Harry's robes.

Harry gasped and caught Malfoy's wrists. "It's all right," he said. "We're inside now. You can relax."

"And what about you?" Malfoy murmured, biting Harry's shoulder where he had pulled the robe back far enough to do so. "Do you get to stay tense and stare at me when I'm spread out on the bed, waiting for you?"

Harry shuddered helplessly and kissed Malfoy beneath the ear, his fingers reaching out without his permission to clasp Malfoy's robes. And then he thought again of what it would mean for Malfoy if Harry slept with him under false pretenses. Harry wasn't truly worried about getting hurt himself. He had been and weathered it. But for Malfoy to have opened his heart to someone like that and then be fooled—

No. Harry couldn't do it, even for the sake of finding out what that magic in the cellars was. There were other ways to do that. He never should have let Binks talk him into this one.

He stepped back, although Malfoy's restless hands had already located skin on his arms and chest, and shook his head. "I can't do this," he said. "It's not—it's unfair to you."

Malfoy stopped dead and stared at him. Then he said, carefully, "Are you dating someone else?"

Harry shook his head again. His throat hurt with the pressure of his heart against it. "No. And I'm not planning to any time soon. It has to do with my motives for starting the Courtship in the first place. You see—"

Malfoy wore an odd expression now, one of mingled satisfaction and contempt. "We've been over that," he said. "And we've established that I didn't care. Why would you bring it up again, on the brink of satisfying our desires? Did you think that I would be able to forget or forgive you for backing out now?"

Harry blinked. He hadn't looked at it that way. And he couldn't, because that would mean drifting into deception again, taking the easy way out, letting Malfoy believe what he needed to until the moment when Harry had to tell him the truth. Ultimately, his pain would be worse then, no matter what he might feel now.

"I don't expect you to forgive me," Harry said. "But you really need to know why I did this in the first place. There was an accusation made that—"

"And you thought you could protect me," Malfoy interrupted. "Yes, yes, very sweet. But it _doesn't matter. _I would have been able to tell if you were still only acting on that motive. I'm a good reader of emotions, and you're a poor liar. Look me in the eyes and tell me honestly that you're only here because of the Ministry."

Harry hissed under his breath. Of course he wasn't going to be able to do that, with his poor acting skills. But Malfoy was making this more complicated than it had to be.

Harry did try. He leaned forwards, so that he could stare into Malfoy's eyes from a few inches away, and said, "The Ministry sent me to Court you, and that's the only reason I'm still here." But his eyes slid to the side, and his tongue stuttered over the words, and he blushed the way he always had when McGonagall caught him in the middle of a lie at Hogwarts.

Malfoy laughed. "Yes, of course you are. And why would someone send you to _Court _me, anyway? Much easier to ask me questions in a different way or arrest me on the spot, wouldn't you agree? The Courting is unnecessary. The Ministry's always dealt in a high-handed way with my family, and there's no reason for them to stop." Bright bitterness sparked in his voice.

"Right, there isn't," Harry muttered, and tried to think of how to say that the Courting was his insane Head Auror's idea in such a way that Malfoy would believe him. Then he realized he didn't need to do that. He was such a bad liar that Malfoy would have to believe him if he told the story as it had happened.

Harry looked up, fully intending to do that. His head was full of good intentions, in fact. He was really going to do it. He had no other thoughts in his mind. He was the pure and perfect paragon, the fantasy hero and dream lover, that Malfoy so badly needed, although he would rescue Malfoy without touching his skin.

His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and his good intentions fled.

Because Malfoy was slowly but surely stripping, and Harry watched him with desire that flared up and burned through him like a wildfire, making him shake. His emotions never got _that _out of control, not since he was a teenager.

But now they did.

Malfoy smiled at him, peeling his lips back from his teeth like a hunting cat. Harry had no idea why even that was wonderful, but it was. Malfoy was _lean _beneath his robes, as if he never saw or took advantage of the rich food that abounded at his parties. His limbs were bony, his skin too pale and stretched taut over the tendons in some places, his stomach flat with planes of muscle that made him look unhealthy.

Harry didn't care. Because that lean body belonged to the man who had said that he trusted Harry, and his eyes were the same, and his smile was, if not the same, the kind of challenge Harry had never been able to resist.

"I don't believe you that the Ministry made you Court me," Malfoy said, and took a step forwards, naked now, rocking on the balls of his feet as if he wanted to test the floor for sturdiness. His voice never varied from its cool, assessing tone, and Harry realized that he also found _that _arousing, that Malfoy could talk as if nothing had changed when he was naked like that and Harry was still mostly clothed. "I believe that you came of your own free will, and you're frightened now because getting into bed with me constitutes a new step for you, a step that you can't back away from."

Harry scowled at him. He could feel sweat breaking out under his arms and the way his hands itched. His skin was too hot and packed under the clothes, as if they were ropes that bound that him instead of very nice robes. "It's a new step. I don't mind admitting that. But it's not frightening. I'm not frightened."

"Yes, you are," Malfoy said, and his voice twisted and became mocking. "Poor little Potter, who can face down a Dark Lord armed with the Elder Wand but not one naked man asking for his touch. _Poor _little Potter, who'll turn around and march away, secure in his chastity and good intentions, instead of taking what he really wants. Poor _little_ Potter, who'll lie awake tonight, wanking himself, and thinking of me in the embrace of someone else, because I _would _go there, if only for the pleasure, if you walked out of here—"

Harry's resolve broke.

He dashed forwards, and Malfoy laughed at him before Harry sealed their mouths together again and sent them stumbling into the room they stood at the door of. He'd already seen an immense bed covered with cobalt-blue sheets, so he knew it was all right for them to be in here, that it was Malfoy's bedroom or at least _a _bedroom, and right now Harry wouldn't have been adverse to stumbling into a hayloft, as long as it would bring their bodies together.

Malfoy laughed again as Harry clawed at his own clothes, pulling them off and shredding them with a spell when they didn't go fast enough. He pulled himself up on his elbows and watched Harry's chest, then looked down at his cock with critical eyes. Harry realized he was holding his breath, which was ridiculous.

Malfoy reached out and stroked a finger down Harry's cock as if he wanted to test the weight and warmth. Then he looked up, back into Harry's face, and gave him a cool nod. "You'll do," he said.

He couldn't hide the delight in his eyes any longer, and Harry accepted that as permission. He pushed Malfoy flat and straddled him, gathering up Malfoy's cock in one hand and then his own with it, shoving them together, closing his eyes as smooth skin rubbed against smooth skin.

"Oh," Malfoy said, and had his eyes shut as if he were looking into a bright light when Harry next looked at him. He pushed his hips up languidly again and again into Harry's hold, and his face was pink with pleasure and his chest was slowly flushing, too. Harry traced one bony shoulder with his finger, but had to grab on to Malfoy's hip in the next moment so that he could keep balanced. "I don't—that's not complicated, but it's just _right_."

He fell silent then, panting and grunting, and Harry felt free to let his hand move faster and faster. Their skin was slick and sticky, and his fingers ached from his tight hold. But there was warmth between his fingers, too, pressing against them and leaking through them, and Malfoy had arched his neck back at an impossible angle.

Staring at him, Harry thought that this was another kind of vulnerability Malfoy was trusting him with, that he could see into his body at the moment the same way he'd seen into his heart when Malfoy spoke to him at the library ceremony—

His joints seemed to thrum. Harry knelt up further and stared into Malfoy's face as he gave a few particularly hard jerks.

Malfoy's eyes fluttered open and he stared at Harry in surprise. Then he reached up, dug his fingers bruisingly into Harry's shoulders, and came with a series of stifled yelps from his throat and knocks from his knees.

Harry held out a few moments longer, admiring the curve of Malfoy's neck, the click of his swallowing, and the sudden sodden mess between his fingers. Then he bowed his head back until he almost touched his shoulders and gave in.

It felt like someone yanking his orgasm out of him, maybe because Malfoy had reached down to join in, fist squeezing and pulling in an unfamiliar way. But it was good, and it left him weak, and Harry fell panting across Malfoy's chest and mindlessly kissed his shoulder without a thought of what would happen next.

"That was something, Potter," Malfoy said into his ear, and his hands smoothed up Harry's back and then down again, as if he wanted to absorb all the warmth and weight of Harry into his body and readjust it to his liking.

Harry wished he could speak, but his throat was dry and his head aching. He settled for another kiss and turning over on Malfoy's chest to look into his eyes. Malfoy's face was open, dazed, satisfied, and happy.

The guilt returned with the sight, settling heavily in the middle of Harry's chest. He reached out and shifted Malfoy's head into a new position so that he could more easily lie on the pillow beside him.

_What the fuck am I going to do?_

Harry didn't know. He hurt again with the thought. He should have held out against Malfoy's seductions, because this would make the inevitable betrayal worse. And what exactly would he say when Ron and Hermione accused him, rightly, of having slept with Malfoy of his own free will and made things worse on his own? "Well, when I saw him naked, I just couldn't resist?"

That was more information than they would want.

It also happened to be true.

Harry felt the pulse of a new headache come to life in his right temple. He kissed Malfoy again, half-frantically, and Malfoy fended him off with a push, licking a promising stripe up from Harry's neck to his ear.

"We'll have plenty of time for that," Malfoy murmured. "We'll have plenty of time for discussing what this means, for that matter." He dug his fingers into Harry's arm as if he wanted to feel the texture of the flesh and reassure himself of its reality. "For the present, I think we should both try to sleep."

Harry swallowed and nodded. And it was very hard not to fall asleep cradled in Malfoy's arms and the warmth that seemed to spread out from him like an aura. Harry fought the descent of his eyelids several times, but the real enemy was the temptation to simply lie there, count Malfoy's individual hairs and individual perfections, and not think of the future.

But it ended. It had to end.

Harry began to shift himself upwards, climbing over the bed's massive headboard. It wasn't easy, but he'd done harder things, and it helped that the bed stood some distance from the wall. He slithered slowly enough that Malfoy's arms fell limp and empty without waking him, and then Harry twisted around and landed carefully on the floor, wincing in anticipation of creaks.

There were none. Malfoy Manor was an old house, but expertly maintained and cared-for by house-elves, Harry thought. He had never expected to feel as grateful for that fact as he did now.

Harry cast _Reparo _on his robes and dressed with quick, expert motions. He avoided looking at Malfoy as much as he could, but _that _was no good, because he kept bowing his head to find some other scattered article of clothing, and that meant that he could see the bed. Malfoy still lay in the same position, never changing, as if his post-coital doze was deep and dreamless. Harry fervently hoped he would remain there until Harry came back, and not just because it would give Harry more of a chance to do what he needed to do. It might be the last moment of happiness he would enjoy for some time.

_If ever._

Harry shook his head and grimaced. He wasn't worried that Malfoy would go suicidal or never recover. That would be attributing more power to himself than he possessed and more delicacy to Malfoy than he possibly could have. Harry didn't think Malfoy would consent to die of a broken heart. He would be more likely to hunt down the person who had hurt him and cause them to die in some slow, painful way.

Harry would be willing to do that for him.

_Stop thinking in clichés and find the dungeons._

Harry picked up his wand and glided out of the room. It was only when he was halfway down a set of descending stairs that he realized he could have cast a charm to keep Malfoy safely asleep while he searched.

And also that he couldn't have done it. His honesty had failed so far, but from now on, it wouldn't be permitted to. Harry was going to stand or fall by what naturally happened as a result of his own stupid actions.

* * *

There was no problem in finding the way. The minute he entered the dungeons—which seemed to begin immediately below the floor with Malfoy's bedroom on—his scar flared like a bonfire. Harry hissed, cast a slight Numbing Charm on it so that he could keep his feet and feel it at the same time, and followed the tug of the pain and heat towards a large iron door with bronze hinges.

It was locked, and from the amount of dust on it, it appeared not to have been opened in years. Harry examined it with a frown. How had an artifact that could resurrect Voldemort got in there, if it hadn't been opened?

And then Harry remembered that the amount of dust that could have built up simply since Voldemort was living in Malfoy Manor was quite substantial, and blushed in the dark. It was far from the most embarrassing thing he'd done that day, but it felt like the last possible straw to the building mound of stupidity he was carrying around with him.

He tried several unlocking charms, and none of them worked. Then he had what was probably another idea that wouldn't work, but at least the flush had died from his face now and he felt prepared to encounter more embarrassment. Harry stepped forwards and pressed his forehead against the door, so that his scar came into contact with the metal.

The pain knocked him down. Harry had to lie there panting for a few minutes, flashes of white light glowing in his head, until he could sit up.

Then he realized the door was ajar.

Gingerly, Harry pried it further open with a spell and stood, braced against the walls, ready for some horrible guardian to come rushing out at him. Nothing happened. Harry picked his way forwards, prepared to see a room full of Malfoy heirlooms that he would have to spend hours searching for a Horcrux.

The room was empty, however, except for a hole excavated in the middle of the floor, and something large and white that lay inside it. Harry blinked and examined it. A huge diamond? It glowed like one in the dim light of his wand. But no, it didn't have facets. It was oval-shaped, and had a narrow end and a wide one, and—

It was an egg.

In an instant, Harry understood what must have happened. Nagini had been female. She was a Horcrux, and she could either have made the unborn snake one, too, or simply left a residue of the evil Voldemort had tainted her with on her eggs. Harry wondered why no one had ever noticed it before. Perhaps the magic had increased recently as a sign that the snake inside was getting ready to hatch.

Whichever was true, it had to be destroyed. Harry raised his wand and incanted a curse that Binks would frown sternly about and that the other Aurors would pretend they didn't know Harry could perform.

The fire that burst into being in the heart of the egg was nearly as brilliant a white as the shell of the egg itself and completely silent. Harry had to take a step back as the sheer heat of it threatened to burn his eyelashes. Then he watched the fire burn, taking care that, whenever one of the flames reached towards the outside of the pit, he could wave his wand and head it off.

The Caustic Curse was an excellent means of getting rid of Dark artifacts and the bodies of twisted magical creatures, but it would burn without stopping anything it could get a hold of. Harry had to contain it until the original fodder was gone and the final spark shone, tried to reach out, couldn't get a grip, and died.

Harry took a deep breath and turned around.

Malfoy was standing in the doorway behind him, his face ashen.

Harry winced and locked his elbows against his sides, trying to brace himself as best he could. He had planned to go back upstairs the instant he was finished burning the egg and tell Malfoy the truth. Perhaps it was just as well that Malfoy had come seeking him, so that he wouldn't have a chance to put his confession off.

"That was what you came here for," Malfoy said, his voice dead. "It never had anything to do with me." He looked at the pit where the egg had lived and died as if he wanted to crawl into it and pull the earth in after him. "Not with me," he whispered.

Harry waited a moment before replying. Yes, the pain in his scar had died, and the burn was fading as if following the Caustic Curse into oblivion. The source of Voldemort's magic was gone. Harry didn't think there was another one inside the walls of Malfoy Manor or anywhere nearby.

Which made him feel even more foolish and depressed and angry and stupid. If it was something so small, why _couldn't _they have approached Malfoy in the first place, asked about it, and then got his help in destroying it?

_You didn't know it was small, _Harry reminded himself, but it sounded like a poor excuse.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Malfoy's eyes snapped back to his face, and his sneer deepened. "Oh, yes? And that makes it all better, does it?"

Harry shook his head. "It doesn't. I just wanted you to know that at the beginning." He took a deep breath. "My Head Auror, Benjamin Binks, wanted me to Court you because he thought it was the best way to get into your house and gain your trust. He wanted me to investigate the source of Voldemort's magic that we could feel here—"

"There was none of _his_ magic here." Malfoy had drawn himself up, and he looked so dignified that it took Harry a long moment to realize that he was only half-dressed, with pants and a slightly shabby pair of older trousers on. "I would have known."

"What I just burned was one of his snake's eggs," Harry said. "I believe that you weren't keeping it hidden on purpose. But I couldn't be certain of that until I found it and knew what it was. And it did exist. I could feel my scar burning the minute I stepped into the Manor that first evening."

Malfoy went pale. For a moment, his tongue tangled around his teeth without sound, as if he couldn't decide which question he wanted to ask first. Then he snapped, "And you couldn't simply come to me and _tell _me this?"

"Binks decided, and I agreed, that you wouldn't have a reason to cooperate with Aurors," Harry said simply, never looking away. His chest apparently had a large shard of some kind through it, a shard of bone or eggshell, or so he thought from the way his heart hurt. But it didn't matter. He had to go ahead with the truth. "I didn't want to use the Courting as a way of getting close to you. I thought you would refuse my first letter and gift. But I should have fought harder to avoid hurting you. I'm sorry."

Malfoy shut his eyes. "Your denials make a lot more sense now," he whispered.

Harry nodded. "I'm sorry." Such inadequate words, and he wasn't sure why he kept repeating them. Did he want Malfoy to believe them and give him another chance? But that wasn't going to happen even if Malfoy did believe them. Why should he accept someone who hadn't fought hard enough for him?

"Why did you continue to go along with the Courting?" Malfoy's eyes sprang open, and now he spoke in a cold voice, the voice that Harry had heard Ron use when he was trying to avoid getting emotionally involved in the details of a hard case. "Why didn't you want to do it in the first place?"

"I thought you would have changed from the boy I knew in school," Harry said. "I didn't want to hurt you—"

Malfoy interrupted him with a low, ugly laugh that seemed to have pieces of flesh floating in it.

Harry looked away and winced. "I know. I'm sorry."

"Then why go along with it?" Malfoy's voice was even flatter now, and looking at him, Harry could practically see him building up the cold wall to withdraw behind it. He wanted to say something about that, to implore Malfoy not to do it, but how could he? Malfoy had every right, and maybe it was the only thing that would keep him safe in a world of people determined to use him for their own reasons.

"I couldn't think of any better plan, I kept hoping that you would wake up, and I was attracted to you," Harry said. "That's really the truth."

"Yes, you're a bad liar, aren't you," Malfoy said. "So my only alternative is to believe that you were reluctant, but that being a good Auror mattered more to you than being a good lover. That you slept with me because you're attracted to me, and because you weren't strong enough to hold yourself back."

Harry was the one who wanted to crawl into the pit in the floor, now. He had to keep standing there and nod, though, because it was what adults did.

Malfoy stared blankly at the wall. "It was you," he said.

"What?" Harry wouldn't have asked if he could have avoided it, but the word sprang past his lips without permission.

"When I dreamed of a lover who could rescue me, and then when I changed my mind and just wanted someone honest and attractive." Malfoy was rubbing his mouth with the back of one hand. "It was you. It was always you. I told myself to be content with someone else, that I _could _be content with someone else, and not to trust you when you began the Courting. But I had no choice. What would you do if one of your dreams came to life and acted exactly as you always hoped he would? You would reach out and hang on with both hands. I'm not in love with you—and thank Merlin for that—but I kept thinking you would be perfect, in the way that fantasies always are. And then the fantasy seemed to be coming true." Another ugly laugh. "I can't even trust my own perceptions or my own dreams anymore."

Harry didn't think anything he could say would be profound enough for the pain in Malfoy's voice. He moved forwards, arms reaching out, not sure he would be allowed to embrace Malfoy, but wanting to, to show—

Malfoy snapped around to face him. "Get out," he said. "If I see you in my house again, I'll kill you."

Harry remained still a moment longer, wondering if he should try to atone, to heal Malfoy, or at least apologize.

But he'd hurt him enough, and there wasn't a hint in Malfoy's demeanor that indicated a secret yearning for Harry to comfort him. Harry nodded and left.

The pain accompanied him all the way, and all through his report to Binks, and to bed at night.


	6. Harry Potter Is Sorry

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Six—Harry Potter Is Sorry_

"This is an excellent report, Potter," Binks said, and looked through the pages with a greedy expression, as if he were savoring a few words at a time in preparation for the feast of the full report later. "Well done. You'll have my commendation." He put the report carefully aside in a stack of parchment that looked as if it would tilt and fall from just one more addition.

"And the money I spent on gifts for Malfoy will be refunded?" Harry managed to make himself ask the question in a calm voice. He sat bolt upright in the chair before Binks's desk, his fingers twisted together. That would keep him from reaching across the desk to strangle Binks.

_Maybe._

Harry took a long breath and brutally reminded himself that he had been the one to accept the commission to Court Malfoy. He hadn't needed to do that. Binks had come up with the idea, but he couldn't have _forced _Harry to do it that way. Or Harry could have written a "good" Courting letter for Binks and sent a ridiculously over-the-top one to Malfoy, and that would have solved the problem.

_I could have solved the problem in all sorts of ways, if I had only been cleverer._

Binks nodded and beamed at him. "Of course, Potter. Could you think that we would let one of our bravest Aurors go uncompensated?"

Harry nodded stiffly and stood up, although Binks acted as if he'd like to delay Harry and talk about the case a while. When he was near the door, though, he paused and looked over his shoulder. "Malfoy isn't suspected of anything else, is he, sir? There are no other charges that the Auror Department wants to bring against him?"

"No," Binks said, turning back to the report as if drawn by magnets. Then he abruptly looked up, eyes narrowed. "Unless you have charges that you want to bring against him, Auror Potter. Did you sense the emanations of any Dark artifacts while you were there? I'll make sure to give you proper credit, and you can lead a task force that will invade the Manor tomorrow at midnight—"

"One of Malfoy's parties would probably still be going on then," Harry muttered, and waved a hand. "No, sir, I didn't sense anything. I simply wondered."

"Oh." Binks sank back into his seat like a punctured balloon. "No, Auror Potter. Nothing else out of the ordinary has been reported."

Harry nodded shortly and jogged out of the Head Auror's office, heading for his own. There was nothing else that he needed. He had wanted official assurance that Malfoy was off the suspect list, though, because otherwise it could have been highly problematic for Harry to try and repair his mistake.

If he _could _repair his mistake. If he deserved another chance to try.

Harry had lain awake debating with himself about that last night. In one sense, it would be stupid to try and make up for his mistakes. There was nothing he could do to atone for destroying Malfoy's trust. Malfoy would probably reject any overtures anyway, which he had a perfect right to do. And Harry had hurt him so badly already; why in the world couldn't he leave him alone and let him get on with his life in grieving silence, while Harry got on with his in much the same sort of grief?

At least he had an answer for that one. He _didn't _think Malfoy would get on with his life, in silence or loudly. He would retreat into his world of cold expectations and endless parties and loneliness, except that this time, the one fantasy that had given him comfort would be gone. Harry couldn't picture Malfoy committing suicide or dying of a broken heart or any of that other nonsense, but he could picture him becoming a perfect automaton, never allowing himself to experience warm emotions again.

Harry didn't want to do that to anyone. He least of all wanted to do it to the brilliant, smiling, risk-taking Malfoy he had briefly seen.

But that returned him to the same problem. How could he make up for it? Would Malfoy even want him to? Harry would have contacted him and asked, except that he didn't want to put the burden of the decision on Malfoy.

_Maybe this is what you deserve, _Harry told himself as he pushed a quill up his slightly slanted desk and then watched it roll back towards the bottom and the great stack of reports he hadn't yet finished. _To spend the rest of your life mourning the chances lost and comparing everyone you date to him._

Then Harry blinked and sat up, because he had just had another thought that made too much sense to ignore.

_It might be what I deserve, but it's not what he does._

Harry nodded. Yes, he would have to be careful, and he would probably endure setbacks at first, but he would at least offer Malfoy apologies and the only gift he could think of that would possibly make up for what he had done. Or at least _start _to make up for it; Harry was too smart to think that one gift would make Malfoy smile at him and welcome him back with loving arms.

Maybe that would never happen, in fact. But Harry might cause Malfoy to feel a little better about things.

He wrote a swift note to say that he was in Diagon Alley interviewing witnesses—and that could even be true, because there were a few shopkeepers he could stop in and ask questions of—and hung it on his door, then made sure he had a pouch full of Galleons on his belt. As he stepped out in the corridor, he realized he was grinning.

_Why not? At least I know what I'm going to try. The most important thing is the trying, not whether it works. If it doesn't work, you try something else._

Harry had to admit, though, that he was really hoping this first try would work, if only because it would be so expensive.

* * *

The door of the shop gave a nasty creak when he opened it. Harry winced a bit, then decided it was probably deliberate and an interesting substitute for a bell. He looked around cautiously, wondering who would come out to meet him.

No one at the moment, it appeared. Harry was alone in a shop that had decided to be different from most others along the Alley. It was brighter than usual, rather than dimmer than usual.

Harry had to squint as he stared up at the crystal balls, glass globes, stained glass window panes, mirrors, and delicate ornaments covering the walls. On a perch directly above his head, a transparent bird preened itself with a sound of tinkling feathers. The far wall showed a mirror in a frame so elaborate that Harry felt his eyes getting lost in the curlicues and flowers and capering snakes of it.

"Mr. Potter?"

Harry looked up. They had said that the proprietor of Grimoires and Glassworks was calm no matter who came into her shop, and it seemed to be so. At least she showed no inclination to make a fuss over him. She was a tall woman with a slightly unfocused gaze that reminded him of Trelawney and bright orange hair that reminded him of Ginny. She wore a sheer robe that somehow resembled glass without revealing her body. She halted a few steps in front of him and stared at him.

"Madam Lucent?" Harry asked, just to be sure.

She nodded. "Yes. What did you come here to purchase, Mr. Potter? I can't imagine that you have much need of crystal balls. Most of your future has become real to you already."

Harry hesitated, then decided that he wasn't going to pursue that particular speech. His life had become much happier when he stopped believing that everyone who wanted to say something strange to him was speaking the truth. "I'm looking for one of the memory globes that you advertised last year."

Madam Lucent smiled. It made her face seem to shine and brighten in unusual dimensions, as if she carried her own private sun around with her. "Ah, yes, of course. They're much more convenient than Pensieves, though I'm afraid not as accurate. For one thing, you don't have to worry about the memories spilling out." She turned around and walked towards the back of the shop.

"What about them breaking?" Harry asked, following her. A thing that looked like a whip made of crystals hung from the ceiling and brushed his hair as he passed. Harry ducked automatically, thought of asking what it was, and then didn't. He was here for the memory globes, and they were strange enough.

"You can believe that I mastered the charms that keep glass from breaking _first_," Madam Lucent said, with an asperity in her voice that earned a laugh from Harry. "Ah. Here." She picked up something from a shelf and turned around to show it to him.

Harry's breath caught. What she held was a glass globe perhaps a foot high and ten inches wide, with a silver tower in the middle of it. Flecks of light vaulted and danced around the tower like snow in some Muggle toys Harry had seen. Now and then they formed patterns on the tower: dragons, birds, vines.

The base was gold. Harry winced at the sight of it. On the other hand, at least it might catch Malfoy's attention and keep him from breaking it immediately.

"How is this different from a Pensieve?" he asked, although he thought he knew. But his recent experiences had made him wary of being _sure _that he was right in any particular situation. He took the globe gingerly from Madam Lucent and discovered that it was warm. The silver flecks swirled up and brushed against the glass, and that made it warmer still. Harry shivered and tried not to drop it.

Madam Lucent watched him for a few critical moments without answering, as if she wanted to see how he handled the globe before she sold it to him. Then she smiled. "A Pensieve contains the memories that someone puts into it, and it can keep those memories safe because, while it holds them, they are not in the giver's head," she said. "That is a tactic often used to protect against enemies who might use Legilimency on you while you're carrying an important secret."

Harry tried not to flinch when he nodded. He knew all about that, remembering Snape's Pensieve and the way he had tried to protect his memory of Harry's mum rescuing him.

"This globe absorbs the memory while permitting you to retain it, so that you can still look at it and know what it was even while the globe shows it." Madam Lucent reached out as if she would stroke the globe, but instead hovered her hand above the glass. The silver flecks swirled towards her fingers anyway. "It also can't spill, unlike a Pensieve. And the Pensieve gives you an objective perspective; you can see things that were happening at the same time which the owner of the memory might not have been able to see." She looked up and directly into Harry's eyes. "My globes give the person who touches them _your _perspective. They see and feel as you did. The globe conveys the emotional jolt."

Harry swallowed. Yes, this was what he wanted. It would make him vulnerable to Malfoy, of course, particularly considering the memories that he was going to put into it.

But that was the point. If Harry couldn't repair what he had done to Malfoy, or make up for it, he could at least show that he was willing to be equally vulnerable, and that Malfoy could have one of Harry's secrets to betray because Harry had one of his.

"It's a revealing gift," Madam Lucent added. "I was surprised when you told me that you wanted one. Are you sure?" Harry knew she was probably thinking of all the people who would love to get hold of something like this so that they could embarrass the Great Harry Potter, or at least get some extra Galleons not to sell the story to the papers.

"I'm sure," Harry said. "The one who's going to receive this one is someone I trust."

Madam Lucent nodded, not showing any emotion now. "Good. To activate the globe, you'll need to lay both hands on it and wait until all the flecks of light rise to outline your fingers. That's a precaution to prevent someone from accidentally using it when they don't mean to. Then, think hard about the person you want the globe to go to and the memories, in that order. You'll feel nothing when they pass out of you, so you'll have to check the globe when you're done to ensure that it actually contains the memories you wanted to give."

Harry frowned. "How do I do that?" He hadn't even thought about the fact that he would probably have to send Malfoy instructions for the memory globe. Of course, maybe he knew how to use one already, but Harry really meant to stop assuming things as much as possible.

"Touch the base of the globe with one hand, the top with the other, and lean your cheek against it," Madam Lucent said.

Harry swallowed and tried to smile. For some reason, the vision of Malfoy that came to mind when Harry thought of him doing that was powerful and affecting.

_It's probably only because he'll be in contact with part of you, you pervert, _he told himself, and focused on Madam Lucent again. "You've taken plenty of precautions to prevent anyone from using these globes by mistake, haven't you?"

Madam Lucent shrugged, not taking her eyes from Harry. "The consequences could be devastating if someone gave up memories they didn't want to or saw memories they weren't supposed to. Yes, I don't want my gifts to be misused."

"Wish I could say that I'd never misused mine," Harry muttered.

"Pardon?' A line of confusion stretched across Madam Lucent's forehead, as if she didn't know for certain what she'd heard.

"Nothing." Harry shook his head. "Thank you for the advice, and the information on unlocking the globes. How much is it?"

The amount made him wince again, particularly since the Auror Department wouldn't be compensating him for this one, but Harry still handed over the Galleons without fussing. After all, he had chosen this gift of his own free will. He didn't _have _to send it. Malfoy would certainly not be expecting to receive it. He probably thought Harry was going to blurt out his secrets at any moment now, or laugh at him in contempt. After all, he hadn't believed Harry's apologies.

_Why should he? _Harry thought, heaving the globe out the door of the shop. _And he'd probably burn or tear up any letter I sound, and rightfully so. He's had enough of my words. If I send him something that can't be mistaken for excuses or apologies though, perhaps he'll listen._

Even when he leaned against the globe to check that the right memories had gone in, though, Harry tried to keep himself from hoping too much.

* * *

The letter came early the next morning, burning through the air like a comet. Malfoy had chosen a showy white owl to deliver it. Harry blinked and barely caught it in time as the owl tossed it on his desk as if it were a dead mouse.

Harry took a deep breath and opened the letter. The seal burned his fingers, but not worse than a Stinging Hex would have, and in moments he had it cracked and was reading what Malfoy had to say to him.

The letter was no more than a single line long, though, and bore no signature. If not for the fact that he had studied the handwriting on the solitary letter Malfoy had sent him when he first authorized Harry to continue the Courting, Harry might not have been sure who it was from.

Well, all right. The subject matter of the letter would have told him that, too.

_Why would you show me that you'd been abused by your Muggle relatives?_

Harry closed his eyes tightly. Malfoy hadn't broken the memory globe. He hadn't thrown it away. He had listened to Harry's instructions about how to access the memories, and it seemed that he'd observed most of them. If he had stopped after the first, he might have thought that Harry had simply been beaten up by his cousin—he probably wouldn't even have realized that Dudley was Harry's cousin—and had nothing to complain about.

Harry seized ink and quill and parchment and wrote back, not pausing to think about his words. He had planned a lot to come up with the memory globe and the fact that Malfoy would probably like to see Harry just as vulnerable as he had made himself, but past that, he wanted to respond from his heart.

_I sent that to you because you gave me a secret, and I wronged you. I also have power over you because of it, something that you must have realized. I won't go to the papers, but I can't blame you if you don't believe me. _

_Now you have a secret that has power over me. Ron and Hermione know I was abused, but I've never shown them the memories. You could give the papers very specific details if you wanted. The balance of power is even again._

_What you choose to do with this is up to you. I should admit that I'm feeling upset and helpless right now, like someone could inflict a wound on me any minute. But that's probably how you feel, too._

_Harry._

He sealed the letter and looked up. The owl was already hovering above his desk and snatched the letter before he could offer it, flying away.

Harry leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. The only thing he could do now was wait, weak and sick and shaky…

And hopeful.

* * *

The second letter came as he was leaving the Ministry for the day. Ron was walking with him, and stared slack-jawed at the white owl who winged up to Harry, landed on his shoulder, and shat triumphantly down his back while handing him the letter.

"Unpleasant owl," he commented, his brow wrinkling. "Who's _that_ from, mate?"

Harry cast a spell to remove the owl's shit in resignation and opened the letter. The paper inside was bent. Harry wondered if that was simply from the pressure of the owl's beak, or if he could dare to imagine Malfoy pressing the parchment into the desk as he wrote, bending it because he was so angry.

_What the fuck do you mean, Potter? What the fuck do you mean that you gave me those memories to give me power? I can't have that again. You took it from me. Giving me a gift doesn't equal returning me to what I was._

No signature, again, which Harry was grateful for when Ron peered curiously over his shoulder. He'd told his friends that he'd located the source of the Dark magic in Malfoy Manor and it had gone badly, but he couldn't reveal many more details than that without telling secrets he shouldn't.

"Somebody who likes the word fuck," Ron said, and then suddenly looked slyly at Harry and nudged him in the ribs with an elbow. "You're dating someone, and you didn't tell me! Who's the lucky bloke?" Ron always thought other blokes were lucky to be dating Harry, and not the other way around. Harry didn't intend to change his mind about this yet. When and if he and Draco came to terms, then he would.

"I'd prefer not to say," Harry said, and looked as coy as he could with an owl perched on his shoulder and apparently staring into his brain. "I don't know if it's going to work out yet. As you can see, he's rather temperamental."

"I'd say!" Ron hooted and clapped him on the back. "Well, good luck, mate. And if you need any help in hunting him down and holding him still until he listens to you, don't hesitate to ask."

Harry shuddered at the mere thought of doing that with Malfoy. "I don't think so," he said quickly. "But thanks."

Ron kept asking "innocent" questions and chuckling to himself until they reached the Apparition point, where he pounded Harry on the shoulder again and vanished. Harry shook his head and waited carefully until his emotions had settled. He'd learned the hard way that he should never Apparate when he was too upset.

Today, he learned the hard way that he should never Apparate with an owl on his shoulder that he wasn't thinking about. He arrived home in a storm of feathers and outraged squawks, and had to go back to the alley behind the Ministry to find the half a wing that he'd Splinched into the wall.

* * *

It was almost midnight before Harry thought he'd written the right reply. He leaned back, gnawing on the end of his quill until the small feathers stood up rather like the ruffled back of the white owl, and read it over again.

_Dear Draco_:

(He hadn't been given permission to call Malfoy that, but Harry thought he should soon, and this whole enterprise was one big risk).

_I think you misunderstood me. I don't want to return you to what you were before. For one thing, I'm aware that nothing can do that, and it would be stupid for me to think that I could achieve it. For another, I don't _want _you to go back to the way you were before. Sure, you weren't as vulnerable, but you were lonely. I want to give you companionship if I can, and prove that I'm sorry for what I did._

_I want to make you stronger, instead. The only way that I can do that is by making myself as vulnerable as you were willing to do. I was lying all the time—not about how much I liked you, but about my motivations for the Courtship and why I was so anxious to get inside Malfoy Manor. I could have resisted harder when my Head Auror wanted me to Court you, but I didn't. I think I was already acting under the pressure of curiosity about you. You have every right to be angry at me; I'm not trying to talk you out of that. I'm just trying to show you the truth._

_What you do with that truth is up to you. Like I said, you could go to the papers. I have to admit that I don't think you will, but you _could.

_You could also cut off contact with me and refuse to talk to me anymore. That's more likely, and it would hurt._

_Or you could use the truth some other way. I don't know what way that would be yet. I don't want to dictate to you. Think about it. That's all I ask. You were too trusting when you revealed your secrets to me. You owe it to yourself to be more cautious and guarded this next time, and think about who to trust—even if it isn't me._

_Harry._

There were things in the letter that Malfoy might take offense at, but Harry didn't see the point of filling the whole letter full of apologies when he'd already apologized. This would take or it wouldn't. It was up to Malfoy now.

Harry felt uneasy about that, as if he were continually on the brink of a cliff and had no way to step back. But since that was at least similar to what Malfoy was feeling right now, if not equivalent, he would just have to continue on.

He sealed the letter and gave it to the owl. The owl tried to nip him. Harry rapped it on the beak and stared straight into its astonished eyes.

"You _could _tell your owner that he'll get another gift in a few days," Harry said softly, "unless he specifically forbids me to send it."

The owl rose from its perch and swooped out of the window without answering him. Harry leaned back in his chair and fell asleep in his rumpled clothes, which made him late for work the next morning.

At least his dreams were pleasant.


	7. Ron Weasley Is Unexpectedly Insightful

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven—Ron Weasley Is Unexpectedly Insightful_

Harry stood staring at the oven. This was the moment of truth. He had _thought _he could do this, but he hadn't practiced in so long that it would serve him right if he couldn't.

The timer that he'd created with a useful little spell Mrs. Weasley had told him about chimed again. Harry took a deep breath and eased the oven open, ducking from the blast of heated air that billowed into his face.

The tray of biscuits inside _looked _normal. Harry eyed them with concern, though, because they didn't look exactly the same as the biscuits that Mrs. Weasley had showed him or the photographs published in the _Daily Prophet's _new recipe page.

Then he shrugged and took them out of the oven. He would find out soon enough if they were good, because Draco would throw them back in Harry's face if they weren't. When he laid them on the counter—hastily casting a charm beneath them that would protect the counter from their heat—he thought they looked better. They were chocolate on the top, and chocolate most of the way through, too, except that the center of each one was filled with a delicate cream. The recipe pages had said that the cream would please the most refined palate.

_Well, the ingredients were expensive enough, _Harry thought, and cast a number of spells that would help the biscuits to preserve their shape through the journey to Malfoy Manor, while not forcing them to cool down before their time.

Then he picked up the letter that he had written to Draco yesterday, when no answer came to his latest one.

_Dear Draco_:

_I know that you still might not believe me, but I wanted to give you these. I made them. I used a recipe from the _Daily Prophet_, and I'm not sure how it turned out because I didn't want to taste them. (Because they were for you, not because I'm afraid they're awful). Test them for poison if you like._

_I hope you enjoy them._

_Yours fervently,_

_Harry._

Harry chewed his lip and wondered what Draco would think, whether he would disdain the biscuits as not good enough or not believe Harry's letter because they would be _so _good that he would assume a house-elf had to have baked them. Then Harry shrugged. He found Draco hard to fathom at this point; he didn't even know whether Draco had kept silent this last time because he was upset, shocked, disgusted, or trying to decide what to do next. He would push forwards and do what he could to capture Draco's attention without making himself obnoxious.

Besides…

Harry smiled. He wondered when and if Draco would realize what else he was doing, besides trying to send him gifts that would ensure Draco could trust him and relax around him.

The sixth gift in the Courting ritual was one that focused on memories, particularly any memories that were important or special to the person doing the Courting. The seventh one had to be a gift that the Courter had made with his own hands. Harry had fulfilled both of those without announcing it, because he didn't want Draco to feel pressured either way, into letting him continue or making a declaration that would utterly break the Courting off.

Harry was trying to declare his intentions without pressing on Draco or forcing him to make a decision. It was hard, because his intentions could also be misunderstood. Maybe Draco would think of this as another lie.

But given that any pain he would suffer if Draco didn't accept him was minor compared to what Draco had already suffered, Harry didn't see that he had much reason to complain.

He picked up the tray of biscuits, stepped out of his kitchen, and checked the Apparition coordinates in his mind. Then he whirled around and reappeared on the path outside the gates of Malfoy Manor. He wasn't surprised that he could get no closer. Draco had probably changed his wards after the evening that Harry embarrassed him, just in case.

Harry put the tray carefully on the ground and cast a few more charms, ones that would keep off flies and other insects, and sting anyone who tried to touch it without Draco's permission except one of his house-elves. He stepped back and was smiling as he pounded jauntily on the iron gates with one fist.

He saw the doors of the distant house pop open. Harry tipped a salute towards them, though he doubted that anyone who stood there could see it, and then whirled around again and Apparated back home.

* * *

"He must be good."

Harry glanced up in surprise. He had just finished his report on the Dublansky case—which barely qualified as a case, in Harry's opinion, since the family's teenage daughter had turned out to be behind everything for a lark—and he hadn't heard Ron enter the office. There he was now, though, sitting on the edge of the desk and swinging his legs as he stared at Harry.

"What are you talking about?" Harry signed his name on the bottom of the report and stood up. "I have to take this to Binks. Walk with me."

"My favorite journey," Ron muttered, but followed Harry into the corridor without complaint. "Whoever you're dating. You were smiling when you wrote that report, and you usually _never _do that."

"Maybe I only do that when you're not with me and interjecting all these little 'corrections' about what 'really happened,'" Harry muttered.

There was a dangerous moment when he wasn't sure that Ron was going to laugh at that, and then he did, hard enough to make a few of the other Aurors passing turn to stare. Harry leaned an arm against the wall and grinned at him. He was glad that the time during which Binks had split up their partnership was long enough past now that Ron could find it funny.

"I only did it once," Ron said haughtily, straightening back up. "I'm glad now that I have a partner who understands that _I _get to be the hero."

"You were always a hero," Harry said. "That doesn't mean you were a hero for plunging off the bridge that time when you were chasing Trevor Higgins."

Ron looked torn between pleased and insulted, and finally compromised by exclaiming, "I was involved in the chase! I couldn't be expected to notice the end of the bridge was coming up!"

"Yes, of course you couldn't," Harry said, and shook his head mock-sadly at their audience, who were leaning out of office doors now. Seven people snickered as one, and Ron's face turned bright red.

"I _couldn't!"_ he said, still feigning indignation. "And anyway, Harry, if you want to talk about times when you got so involved in a case that you didn't realize what else was going on around you, what about that time with Rebecca George and the blonde hair and the twenty spoons?"

Harry was about to retort, but Binks's door banged open and he leaned out into the corridor, face so dark that most of the spectators melted back into their offices at once. "Potter!" he snapped. "Do you have that report?"

"Yes, sir," Harry said, stepping forwards with a significant eyebrow raise at Ron, to indicate that they would talk later but shouldn't try Binks's patience by continuing the conversation right now. Ron nodded in resignation and loped off down the corridor. Binks always suspected them of trying to become partners again when they held conversations near his office, the bastard.

Harry stepped forwards and handed him the report. Binks accepted it, although he had to try twice because his reaching hand missed it the first time. His eyes were glued to Ron's back.

"I don't trust Weasley," he muttered, so low that Harry didn't think anyone else heard him. Harry was glad for that. He didn't want to think what it might do to Ron's reputation in the Department if anyone heard the Head Auror distrusted him. Most people would know it was a joke on Binks before it was anything else, but there were some who would try to use it against Ron.

Harry stared at Binks. "What, sir?" he asked, keeping his voice low, too, and hoping that the ferocity of his words would stab Binks and make him wake up.

It didn't. Binks simply shook his head and said, "I don't trust him. Always too _cheerful _all the time. I want you to watch him, Potter."

"Sir," Harry began, trying to control his trembling. "Ron's a good Auror. He's passed tests and temptations that have snared some of the others. I can't—"

"I gave you an order, Potter," Binks barked, and his eyes shifted back to Harry. "That's your next assignment. Keep an eye on that so-called _friend _of yours. I want to find out where he goes and what he does, and who's paying him to come in here and smile and laugh."

"Well…you are, sir," Harry said, unable to help himself.

Binks gave him a stern look that would have frozen Harry if it had come from an actually competent Head Auror who had shown that he wasn't paranoid and cared for the welfare of the people working under him. As it was, Harry simply glared back, his hands in fists at his sides, and wondered how he had borne this for so long. _Why _had the Auror Department put up with a Wizengamot member's relative being appointed simply because he was a Wizengamot member's relative, for that matter?

Harry had more than a private reason now to fight back against Binks, and one not so tainted with guilt as the Courting, since he had gone along with that of his own free will and could have fought harder. This time, he was going to battle, and by the time he finished, he doubted that Binks would be Head Auror any longer.

Of course, he showed nothing of that on his face. He bowed and said, "Sir," and then turned and walked down the corridor. He hadn't actually said that he would spy on Ron, but Binks seemed to take it for granted that that was what would happen. Harry heard him walk back into his office.

Harry settled at his desk and drew out a new piece of parchment. He began to write all the facts he knew about Binks down on it, including who he was related to and the other people in the Department who would have made better Head Aurors than he did, and he got so absorbed that the knock on his door startled him into drawing his wand.

"Is it safe?" Ron asked in a voice of exaggerated fear, peering around as though he thought Binks might be lurking in the corners of Harry's office.

"Safe," Harry said with a nod. "But not for Binks. He wanted me to spy on you because you're too cheerful and he thinks you might be a traitor to the Department."

Ron stared at him, his jaw dropping. Harry waved his wand and carefully shut the office door with a spell just in case Ron exploded. Binks had to have some gossips in the Department who would delight in repeating anything Ron said to him just for the pleasure of seeing Ron get in trouble.

But Ron didn't explode. He sat down on Harry's desk again, cocked his head, and said, "He's bloody _mental_, isn't he?"

Harry nodded. "And I'm going to take him down."

Ron's eyes widened. "Be careful with that, mate," he said. Harry would have laughed, but there was a tone of genuine concern that made him listen to Ron. "I know a few other people have complained to the Wizengamot about him and tried to get him removed. One was sacked and one was split up from her partner and partnered with someone else, just like us. Yeah, your name might protect you, but you haven't traded on it before, and that means not as many people would help you as if you always had."

Harry cocked his head. He hadn't known about that, but on the other hand, he couldn't see that it mattered much. He was still going to act, and keep careful records of everything that happened between Binks and him, and he was still more protected than anyone else in the same position would be, because of his name and his parents' private fortune. If he got sacked from being an Auror, it wasn't the end of the world.

"I'll remember that," he said briefly, and started scribbling on his list again.

Ron sat in silence for a few minutes before he cleared his throat and made Harry look up again. "So," he said, with an exaggerated leer. "We got sidetracked from the _real _topic of the conversation. That lucky bloke is making you smile and act more cheerful than you usually are. Aren't you going to tell me who it is?"

Harry hesitated. He really didn't think he could betray Draco's trust anymore, and Ron would be so disbelieving if Harry simply gave his name that Harry would have to explain the whole situation if he wanted it to make sense.

"Someone who makes me happy," he said. "But the situation's really uncertain right now. He's not sure he likes me. It's tense. I'll have to try harder to get him than I usually would. I'd prefer to keep it secret to protect his privacy, just in case this doesn't work out."

Ron nodded, then paused and stared at him so thoughtfully that Harry started to shift back and forth in his seat. "What?" he asked defensively. He was never sure if Ron was going to come out with praise or criticism when he looked like that.

"I reckon that's one reason you're so happy," Ron said. "You can't rest without a challenge. You'd probably get bored with someone who was just calm and pleasant all the time and didn't make you chase them. And that's not a problem," he added hastily as Harry opened his mouth. "It just means that your relationship is different from lots of other people's. Not mine and Hermione's, though," he said, with a reminiscent smile.

"That's not really true," Harry pointed out. "I've dated plenty of people who were happy and pleasant."

Ron rolled his eyes. "And you're not still with any of them. Antonio lasted the longest, and I think that was three months." He reached out and clapped Harry's shoulder while Harry was still trying to think of an exception to what Ron had said. "I'm happy for you, mate, if you're happy. Wait to tell us the name. But just think about what I said. If you win the challenge, are you still going to want to be with him?"

Harry barely heard Ron go out. He put his head in his hands and stared down at the list of facts about Binks. He wished he was still purely angry, because at least that would give him the fuel to go on with this particular task.

What would happen if Draco agreed to the Courting and let Harry come back to him? Would that mean Harry got bored and broke up with him in a different way a few months later?

Harry wanted to say no, but then again, he'd never seen himself as someone who needed a continual challenge until Ron said it.

He sat still, brooding, until someone knocked on his door needing another report and he had to wake up and apply himself to his work. By the time that he had finished that, Harry had decided that he wasn't going to worry too much about what would happen if or when Draco accepted him. After all, so far Draco hadn't responded at all to Harry's last two letters or his gift of biscuits. It was entirely possible Draco had chosen to cut off contact with him, maybe because he found Harry too persistent or irritating.

That would hurt Harry, but it wasn't his choice.

* * *

"What the _fuck _was the meaning of those biscuits, Potter?"

Harry stared. When someone had knocked on the door of his house late at night, he'd been expecting Hermione, Ron, one of the other Weasleys, or, just possibly, a messenger from the Ministry saying that he was needed to work on an emergency case. He hadn't realized that he would be confronting an angry Draco, who stalked across the threshold and slammed the door behind him while Harry was still trying to work spit back into his mouth.

Draco's face was pale, his eyes incandescent with rage. He had his hands clenched as though he wanted to hit Harry. A quick check revealed that his wand was tucked under his shirt, but he didn't reach for it yet. Harry was grateful. That gave him some room to figure out what he would do next.

"I meant them as a gift for you," Harry said. "An apology, if you wanted to take it. You didn't have to eat them if they were awful."

Draco stared at him for so long that Harry envisioned steam rising from his ears as if he was on a Pepper-Up Potion. Then Draco strode up to him, grabbed his shoulders, and shook him until his teeth literally rattled.

"They're also a Courting gift," Draco said, from somewhere beyond the haze of shock. "Did you think I wouldn't understand that? Why the fuck are you continuing to Court me?"

Harry ripped himself free. Draco ought to have understood _this_, at least. Harry had thought he was perfectly clear in his letters. "I wondered how long it would take you to pick up on that," he said coolly. "The memory globe was what I said it was, a means for you to see me vulnerable, but also a Courting gift. The sixth gift in the Courting is supposed to be one based on memory. Remember?" he added, and had to admit that he liked the ability to say that right after he'd mentioned the memory globe. It was like a pun, which Hermione was always telling him he was no good at.

Draco stepped back and reached out to catch himself on the wall. He looked as though he'd fall over without the wall's support, and Harry almost hoped he would. He rubbed his shoulders and glared at Draco. It was one thing to be upset, another to act as though he had a right to hurt someone else.

"You have no reason to continue the Courting," Draco said at last. His face had gone so shuttered that Harry thought he'd have a hard time getting any other emotion out of him now.

"Yes, I do," Harry said. "Two, in fact. I want to, and you haven't told me that you want me to stop."

Draco rubbed his hand as though he had punched Harry and it had hurt. "That's still no reason," he said. "Excuse me for not believing that your desires should matter to me, and for not believing that you'll ever play by the rules."

"No, I don't," Harry said. "Neither did you, with the lilies. But I want to finish the Courting, if you'll let me."

Draco shut his eyes and turned his head away. Harry waited some more. His throat was full of a sour stickiness, he realized, and he dreaded what Draco was going to say so strongly that he wished the moment would be over, not caring any longer whether it brought a negative or a positive answer.

Then he reconsidered that. He did in fact hope that the answer would be positive, very much.

"No one does this," Draco whispered. "That's not the way it works. People either end their relationships amid storms and shouting, or they drift quietly apart. No one I've ever dated has hurt me like this, and yet the ones who inflicted lesser wounds _still _weren't stupid enough to think they deserved a second chance."

Harry winced, but he managed to keep his voice light and steady. "Well," he said. "You could look at it that way. You could also say that none of them were courageous enough to go after what they really wanted, and I am. I _am _going to continue the Courting if you don't outright refuse."

Draco opened his eyes again. They had emotions floating and flashing in them that Harry didn't understand. Draco clenched his fists. "You don't understand how hard this is for me," he said, his voice fragile.

"Then explain." Harry tried to make his tone soothing. "I want to understand you. I want to spend every day for the rest of my life learning you, if you'll let me. But I can't do that if I have to make assumptions. You can explain in your own words, and that'll not only be more accurate but more welcome than my guesses."

Draco, even though he looked pale and shaky, still found the resources for a sneer at him. "I shouldn't have to take up the duty of explaining to you."

"Then I'll have to guess," Harry said. "And I told you why I don't want to do that. And you'd have to speak some words anyway, or at least shake your head, if you don't want me to continue the Courting."

"I don't like being put on the spot," Draco said, his voice like a dog's with a mouthful of meat.

Harry just raised his eyebrow and waited. He saw no reason to repeat himself. His whole effort had been to get Draco here so that he would speak his decision—or for Draco to write him a letter that contained it. Harry had to admit he was a little hopeful, because it seemed Draco would have refused him at once if he was utterly opposed to what Harry wanted.

"Generous, _real _lovers would know not to put me on the spot like that," Draco said.

Harry shook his head. "I'm not as generous or as real as I could have been, with the lies I told from the beginning." It was getting easier now to admit he'd made a mistake. Harry supposed that was what living with guilt day in and day out for years would do to you. "That's the reason I'm trying not to make assumptions now. Like I said, just speak one word or shake your head if you don't want me to continue Courting you."

Draco's eyes clouded over with annoyance. Harry felt a moment's pride that he could read him so well. Or it might be that Draco was simply being more open with Harry than he would with many other people.

If that was true, it was an honor, and Harry hoped that Draco knew he appreciated it.

"What one word could I speak that would end the Courting?" Draco demanded. "All of the possible sentences take more words than that."

"Easy," Harry said. "No. Speak the word 'no' now, and I'll leave you alone." He stepped back and waited again.

Draco pushed himself off the wall. "I came here because I wanted it to be real," he said, stalking closer. "I wanted the fantasy to still be real, can you believe that? Even after you deceived me like that, hurt me like that—" his voice shook, and Harry knew that talking about his own pain was hard for him "—I still wanted to believe. So I accepted your bloody gifts and your bloody letters."

Harry nodded. His heart was beating fast enough to be painful.

"That's why I'm here," Draco said, voice thick with bitterness. "That's why I want you to back off, because the fantasy _can't _be real and I know it, and yet some stupid fucking childish part of me still wants it."

Harry took a breath that felt as if it was edged with knives. "So you want me to stop the Courting."

"No!" Draco slapped his hands together. "I can't call off the Courting because I want it too much! You'll have to be the one who steps away. Don't leave me the choice."

Harry had a brief, dizzy temptation to giggle. Draco was making the choice to have Harry take his choices away.

But there was only so much that Harry was willing to do to make up for his mistake, and destroying both his hopes and Draco's wasn't one of those things. He shook his head slowly. "If I back off now, I'm not abiding by the rules of the Courting," he said.

Draco stared at him. "But you're doing what I ask."

"If this is what you really want," Harry said, "find the strength to do it yourself. I'm not going to have a lover so fragile that he can't make his own decisions."

Draco glared at him, his eyes such small slits Harry could no longer see their color. "_Fragile_," he said, in a voice that made it worse than the profanity he'd spoken so far.

Harry lifted an eyebrow and nodded. He hoped that his strategy of insulting Draco deliberately would pay off.

"I'll show you fragile," Draco said softly. "Yes, continue the Courting. We'll see how strong you really are." He walked out the door without a glance back.

Harry licked his lips. He rather thought he had won that one.

_Maybe._

But Draco not only hadn't taken back his permission for Harry to continue Courting him but had actually encouraged him, and Harry was disposed to think of that as a victory.


	8. Draco Malfoy Is Tyrannical

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight—Draco Malfoy Is Tyrannical_

"Wake up, Potter."

Harry blinked his eyes uncertainly. He remembered falling asleep in his chair out in the drawing room because he was too excited to go to bed after Draco's visit, but he didn't remember granting someone access to his house through the wards.

He didn't have to, he realized after he looked. Draco's face was hovering in the fireplace in front of the chair, and he had a stern expression on his face. Harry sat up and tried desperately to pat his straining hair back into smoothness.

"Good, you're awake," Draco said, without a flicker of emotion on his face to show that he actually thought it was good. "I have a task for you."

Harry gave up on his hair and nodded. "Anything that I can do," he said. "With the exception of illegal things."

Draco sneered a bit. "So you wouldn't help me do something that might hurt your precious Ministry?"

Harry shrugged. "It would depend on what it was. Not all the things that hurt the Ministry are illegal. But yes, I'm not going to kill someone or torture someone because you ask me to. Not that I think you would," he added hastily when Draco stared at him. "But I wanted you to know what my limits were."

Draco's nostrils flared and he drew in a breath so deep that Harry thought he was going to shout. In the end, he shook his head and said, "I want you to go to your friends and tell them everything about what happened between you and me."

Harry let his mouth fall open, because there was just no other way to express his feelings. "_Everything_? Including that we slept together?"

Draco bowed his head as though before a strong wind, but his voice never varied from the clipped, cold tone that he had adopted. "That's right. Everything, including how much of a bastard you were to lie to me."

Harry nodded, but he was still baffled. "If this goes wrong and you decide that you don't want me after all, will you be comfortable with Ron and Hermione knowing your secrets?"

Draco sneered at him. "Would I have asked you to do this if I wasn't comfortable? Contrary to what you think, Potter, I am not some damsel in distress that you need to sacrifice yourself for and make decisions for."

"I know that," Harry said, but he got a skeptical glare in return. He shrugged. "All right. Do you want me to go and do that right now?" It was Saturday, and he thought Ron and Hermione would probably be awake by now. Hermione woke up early all the time on the weekends, claiming that she didn't want to "get out of the habit" since she had to be to work by eight on the weekdays, and Ron usually rose with her.

"Yes," Draco said. "If you have the courage to do it, of course."

"I do," Harry said, deciding that saying anything else would just sound self-aggrandizing, and cast a few Cleaning Charms on his skin and teeth. Then he went to pick up the cloak that hung on a peg by the door.

"I want them to know everything," Draco said, making Harry jump. He'd assumed that Draco had cut off the Floo connection when he saw Harry was leaving. "If I found out that you left out any detail, I'll have your heart."

Harry glanced over his shoulder. Draco was watching him with a haughtily lifted chin. His eyes shone like glass—broken glass. Harry wondered if he knew how many of his emotions he was showing. Probably not. He wouldn't be used to those, like Harry, who had both the ability to read him and a reason to try.

"You have that already," Harry said.

Draco blinked once, and this time his features contorted in something that looked a lot like fear. Then he vanished from the fire as suddenly as though someone had propelled him away. The fire went dead and flickered back down into ashes and cinders.

Harry shook his head and opened the door. He would go and do as Draco asked, and though he didn't really understand the motives behind the request, it was the very least he could do.

And surely something that he would need to do sooner or later, if his hopes came true and he started dating Draco. Hide anything of how they had originally met and agreed to date, and Hermione would sniff it out anyway.

* * *

"Harry? Are you all right?"

Harry snorted as he stepped through the front door of Ron and Hermione's house and hung his cloak up on its accustomed peg there. He apparently couldn't visit his best friends for an early morning breakfast without them thinking something was wrong. Then again, his expression might have given that away.

"I think I will be," he said, bending down so that he could kiss Hermione on the cheek. "But I have something to tell you, and I'm not sure how to begin."

Hermione studied him with her head on one side, then seemed to decide there was nothing immediately the matter and led him into the kitchen. Ron was cooking bacon, or at least standing beside the pan where it sizzled and trying to pretend that he wasn't sampling a piece. That didn't really work when he had to swallow it and then promptly choked.

"It's like living with a child," Hermione said to Harry, apparently resigned, and cast a spell that made a piece of bacon fly out of Ron's mouth and stopped his choking. He looked both sheepish and relieved as he came over to shake Harry's hand—probably because he knew that Hermione would get after _him_ now, instead of concentrating her attention on Ron's mistake.

"God knows what I'm going to do when I have this baby and have to deal with _two _children," Hermione kept on muttering as she waved her wand and a complicated array of plate, glasses, and cutlery floated out of the kitchen and started to lay themselves across the table in the next room.

"You know I'll step up and do my share of the work," Ron told her, not indignantly but with a low seriousness that Harry had thought he only ever used when he was on Auror cases and telling Harry how he would dash in and cut the criminals off.

Hermione looked up at him and her face softened. "I know," she said, and leaned up to kiss him on the mouth.

Harry coughed and turned away, wondering wistfully for a moment if he would ever have something like that with Draco, or anyone else if it turned out that Draco was too hurt to forgive him.

Then he shuddered a bit. If he did date someone he could fall in love with, he had to hope it wouldn't be _exactly _like what Hermione and Ron had, or he would have to ask some serious questions about how his lover had got pregnant.

* * *

"Well, Harry, what did you have to tell us?"

They'd finished breakfast, and Harry felt a little better for having bacon and eggs and toast inside him. He sat sipping a cup of tea in front of the fireplace in Ron and Hermione's drawing room, and both of them were in the chairs across from him, Ron looking contented enough that he might go to sleep right there. Harry saw him stir and then sit upright as Hermione's words came home to him, though.

"It's hard to know how to say this," Harry said, which was true. He set his tea aside and leaned forwards, lowering his clasped hands onto his knees. Ron nodded encouragingly. Hermione smiled.

"You know that Binks sent me to Court Malfoy and see if I could get inside his house to work out what was making my scar burn," he began.

Hermione nodded. "Ron told me about that, but then we assumed it had ended when you came back to the Auror Department and weren't buying gifts for him any longer." She raised a challenging eyebrow. "Did it end?"

"It probably should have," Harry said. "But."

And he told them the way he and Draco had danced, the way that he had kept buying gifts and seeing more of Draco at each meeting, how they had left the library opening ceremony and had sex—he skimmed quickly over that part, since Ron was green and Hermione obviously didn't want details—how he'd found the egg and the rupture between them, and the way that he'd been trying to get back into Draco's good graces since. He hoped they would have some answers for why Draco might have wanted him to tell these details to them, but they were as puzzled as he was, unfortunately.

"It doesn't make sense," Hermione said, her fingers plucking at her robes. "Why would he want _more _people to know his secret? It seems devastating enough to him that you know it." She suddenly sat up and stared at Harry. "Are you sure that was _him_? Could one of his enemies be using Polyjuice Potion to make you think it was him?"

Harry shook his head. "Not unless they were actually doing it from inside Malfoy Manor. I set up an exception for his Floo if he wanted to contact me when Binks first assigned me this, but anyone else doing it from their own house would have trouble getting through."

Hermione didn't look entirely convinced. "But all those parties—"

"You're forgetting that whoever did this would still have to have the details of what happened between Harry and Malfoy," Ron pointed out. He was looking calmer than he had when he seemed to think that Harry would "favor" them with all the descriptions of the sex he and Draco had had. "And if he knew that information, he could spread the gossip himself, without relying on Harry to do it."

"Besides, it's not as if you two are going to gossip," Harry said, looking them both in the eye.

Ron blanched and said, "Of course not, mate." Hermione shook her head.

"I just hope that you and Malfoy can work this out," she said, and smiled at him. "Have you thought about what you'll do next if he keeps giving you more tasks?"

"Do them for him," Harry said, standing and walking over to his cloak. "Unless it becomes illegal or so involved that there's no way I can do them. And then I'll tell him I can't and await further orders. I really don't think that he'd give me anything impossible," he added thoughtfully. "If he wanted the fun of watching me beg fruitlessly to be readmitted to his affections, instead of the fun of watching me do things for him, he could have had that already."

Ron nodded at him. "Good luck, mate."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Are you sure?" he couldn't help teasing. "I know you said that whoever I was going to date was a lucky bloke. Does that hold true now that you know it's Malfoy I want?"

Ron hesitated, then nodded again. "It'll take some getting used to," he admitted grudgingly. "I didn't really think you ever _could _want him, not at first. But you have to go after what you want, and it sounds like you at least have a chance."

Harry tapped his fist lightly on Ron's shoulder, hugged Hermione, wished her luck with the appointment she had at St. Mungo's tomorrow to check on the baby, and then left in a swirl of cloak, wondering how Draco would contact him next time and how he was going to take Harry's report of the conversation with Ron and Hermione.

* * *

The next contact came with a letter, in fact, that the showy, bad-tempered white owl carried through his window the next day and dropped on the desk where he was trying to convince himself that he should use _part _of the weekend to do paperwork. Harry raised his eyebrows and looked from the owl to the envelope. He couldn't sense any stinging charms on it this time, and the owl didn't try to shit on him or his parchment.

"Is this a sign of a truce?" he asked, picking up the paper and sliding his finger beneath the seal. The owl only fluttered its feathers to show that it didn't know and didn't care, and then turned its back.

_I want to know whether you told your friends the way I wanted you to. Write it out in a letter to me. Leave no detail out, including their reactions. And then I want you to strip and take a photograph of yourself naked._

Harry coughed, his face flushing. The owl turned around and cocked its head threateningly, as if it knew exactly what Draco's demand was and thought he should grant it as soon as possible.

He wondered, again, why Draco wanted this. But he was beginning to get an idea. Draco was trying to render Harry as powerless and vulnerable as he felt. If Harry's friends knew about what had happened between Harry and Draco, they would ask questions if something went wrong or Harry suddenly wasn't talking about it anymore. If Draco had a photograph of Harry naked, then he could publish that and make an immediate impact that his words might not, particularly if no one believed them.

At least, Harry hoped that was the rationale. Maybe Draco just wanted to drive him mental.

He actually had to go to Diagon Alley and buy a camera before he could do as Draco asked. He had enough of photographs when people were snapping their cameras madly in his face on an ordinary day, and had seen no reason to keep one around. He had the album of his parents' pictures that Hagrid had given him, and some pictures that Hermione and Ron had given him as gifts. But other than that…

_It might be nice to have a picture of Draco, _Harry admitted to himself as he nodded to the woman behind the counter in Peabody's Pictures and walked briskly out the door in the direction of his Apparition point. The woman was babbling behind him about what an honor it was to serve the Great Harry Potter, and someone had come out of the back of the shop and was asking what she meant. Harry would as soon be far away before the reporters showed up _here._

Once he got home, he examined the camera and the book of spells that came with it and learned that there _was _one that you could use to put the camera on the floor or a table and make it snap a picture of yourself. He wondered if Draco had known that, or if he had simply left the problem of how Harry was to take a picture of himself when he was alone up to Harry's ingenuity.

_Or maybe he just assumes that I would be comfortable enough to be naked in front of a friend who could take it for me, _Harry thought as he began shrugging off his clothes.

It was strange, but he found himself blushing intensely as he stood in front of the camera, which he'd put on the desk, in a way that he hadn't even when he was naked in front of Draco. There was something about Draco, he thought, that made the nakedness seem natural. There, Harry had been assured he was wanted and desired, and it was easier to slip into desire himself, without thinking about consequences.

"_Really_ without thinking about consequences," he said aloud, which made the white owl shift on its perch.

But he had all the clothes off at last and his embarrassment conquered enough that he could stand in front of the camera and speak the appropriate incantation. The camera flashed. Harry flushed, cleared his throat, and hastily cast the spell that would let him develop the photo, while he tugged his pants and trousers on.

The picture didn't look too bad, he reckoned, and hoped that Draco would ignore the flush of his face and the half-hardness of his cock. Or maybe he wouldn't even look at the picture that closely. Maybe it just existed to prove that Harry had done his bidding.

_Maybe Draco will spontaneously fall in love with a Muggle tomorrow morning._

The letter was easier. Harry just described as much as he could, including Hermione's fears that someone had replaced Draco using Polyjuice, and sealed the letter into an envelope with the picture. The owl swooped across and nipped it out of his fingers before he could properly seal it, then flew out the window.

Harry leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. It was done, then, and he could only hope that Draco liked it.

* * *

"I see that you make a habit of sleeping in your chair, Potter."

Harry popped his eyes open at once. It was Monday evening, and he had dozed off in front of the fire hoping that Draco would firecall. At this point, the tension was so extreme that Harry would almost have welcomed the news that Draco planned to publish his photo on the front page of the _Prophet _tomorrow, because at least it would let him know what was going on.

Well. The key word in that thought was _almost_.

"When I'm waiting for a message from you, I do," he admitted, and yawned into the palm of his hand. "Did the letter and the photo reach you intact? I was worried about the owl's beak."

Draco gave him a discomforting smile. "Glacier is well-trained." He paused, and then added, "It looked as though you were excited about something when the camera snapped. Had you just finished wanking?"

Harry felt the familiar flush creeping into his skin again as if it had never been away, but managed to clear his throat and say, "I was thinking about you, and I didn't realize I was that excited until I saw the photo."

Draco leaned back as if the response hadn't been what he expected and stared at Harry through narrowed eyes. Harry looked back, not knowing what else he could do.

"I _see_," Draco said, in a tone that could have cut glass. "And you still claim that you're willing to do anything I ask?"

"With the same constrains that I mentioned before," Harry said, "about not doing something illegal or something that could hurt other people. Unless they're Binks," he added, thinking of the information he had accumulated at work today. The other Aurors were always ready to gossip about Binks and the stupid rules that he had introduced into the Department. It would take Harry some time to sort the stupid rumors and half-remembered stories about something that had happened to a friend's brother's dog from real, actionable facts, but he had a good beginning list.

"Why Binks?" Draco tilted his head as though he were trying to get a lock on the name. "Benjamin Binks, the Head Auror?"

"He was the one who told me to Court you," Harry said. "Now he's trying to get me to spy on Ron. I'll take him down for that, and replace him with a better Head Auror. It's time that we had someone who actually cared about the Department, not just someone who's related to a Wizengamot member."

Draco eyed him carefully. "You're willing to use your name to do this?"

"If that's the only way," Harry said. "I still hope that I can convince some of the Wizengamot members he's incompetent with only testimony. But that'll take a while. Relying on my name would be easier," he ended with some wistfulness. Yes, it _would _be easier, but Hermione would probably glare at him sternly and remind him that because something was easier wasn't a reason to do it. Probably a reason _not _to do it, really.

"Are you punishing him for what he made you do in regards to me?" Draco's voice was absolutely neutral.

"Not only that, but yes," Harry said.

"I see." Draco was dragging in long gulps of air as though he could make himself calmer that way. It didn't seem to be working. Harry was just about to point that out when Draco said, snapping his words off like nuts being crunched between his teeth, "You still value Weasley more than me."

"_What_?" Harry spluttered. "What makes you think that?"

"I'm not good enough to fight your private little war over, but he is," Draco said, and there was a shrug of his shoulders that Harry thought meant he was folding his arms, although that was out of sight of the flames. "Your loyalty to your friends still comes before your loyalty to me. I should have known."

"Stop being ridiculous," Harry snapped. "I don't care how hurt you are. You should realize that I don't value either of you more. He's my friend, you're—well, I hope you would be my lover. I couldn't act against Binks because I was weak and because I was more intrigued by you than I realized when the Courting started. I should have, but I didn't. Now I realize what kind of idiot Binks is, and that means I won't take his request to spy on Ron seriously at all. It was the Courting which taught me that. I can't help that one of those experiences happened before the other."

Draco's face had an icy glaze now. "It's excuses," he said. "And, what, intrigued with me? Next you'll claim that you were secretly in love with me for months or years before you started Courting me."

"I wasn't," Harry said. He surrendered to the impulse to get up from the chair and pace around the room, waving his arms. Why not? Draco wasn't making enough sense for him to keep still. "But I thought about you. I was interested. I wondered how you'd changed. You're the only one left who was really nasty to me during Hogwarts days, the only one I _had _to imagine stories for because death or Azkaban hasn't ended them. And so, yes, I wondered, and I thought, and I pondered, and it weakened my resistance to the Courting idea. I could have come up with ideas that would persuade Binks, but I decided not to. That's what happened. That's all."

"If you felt that strongly, you never would have begun the Courting in the first place," Draco said harshly. "The thought of causing me pain would have been enough for you to leave me alone."

"I felt strongly enough to be weak." Harry turned and whirled in place, his own arms folded now. "That's what I'm trying to say."

"Tell me," Draco said, his eyes narrowed. "If he hadn't ever ordered you to spy on Weasley, would you have wanted to get rid of him?"

"I don't know," Harry said.

Draco inclined his head slowly. "I consider myself answered," he said. "I come in second place in the hierarchy of importance. Your friends come first. I don't know why I find myself startled or hurt by that revelation."

"I've been trying desperately not to put you first," Harry said loudly. Anger and fear warred inside him, whirling up and down, and all the while he had to consider whether anything he said might not put too much pressure on Draco. "I don't know if you'll ever want me back, after all. In that case, putting you first and pining away after you would be stupid."

"Yes, of course it would be," Draco said, and vanished from the fire as he shut down the Floo connection.

Harry flopped back into his chair, stared gloomily at the empty hearth, and wondered if all his attempts to reconcile with Draco were doomed to end in futility.


	9. Harry Potter Is In Love

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of _How Noble In Reason. _Thanks for reading along.

_Chapter Nine—Harry Potter Is In Love_

The letter Harry sent came back with its envelope torn and charred and the owl hooting softly in terror, checking over its shoulder as if whatever ward had caused the burning would have pursued it from the Manor.

The firecall Harry tried met barriers that he'd never encountered before, which actually turned into the heads of a hydra and struck at him through the flames. Harry wasted fifteen minutes chopping at the bloody things before he gave up and simply shut down the Floo.

The Apparition Harry risked bounced him back from the wards and landed him in a meadow from which he couldn't even see the Manor. Harry, his head aching, tried one more time, and this time he was flung through the air and landed in a field with a Muggle yelling at him and trying to break his leg. Harry stood up, used a quick Memory Charm, and Apparated out of there before matters could get any worse.

He tried stalking Draco in Diagon Alley and at the expensive parties that he must occasionally go to, but he never managed to find a time when he was shopping or visiting his friends. Harry was starting to think that the library opening ceremony had been an amazing exception, one Draco had made only for him. Most of the time, it seemed, he was content to stay inside the Manor and party with the people who came to him.

_And how in the world am I going to get inside there?_

He'd even tried riding his broom above, and that way got him closer. But the wards still snapped tight and surrounded the Manor with a thick, turtle-like dome when Harry tried to descend past the Owlery. He pulled up and sat there, hovering disconsolately, until the white owl rose from its perch at the Owlery window and chased him away.

There had to be a way inside, Harry thought, while he obsessed over Draco and his Auror work suffered and Ron and Hermione gave him odd looks. Harry had tried to explain the situation, but they had no suggestions. Hermione's eyes had clouded over with distress, while Ron shook his head.

"If he's that jealous of us, maybe he's not worth it?" he suggested. "It's not like you're going to drop us just to please him." He hesitated. "You're not, right?"

Harry clapped his best friend on the shoulder. It surprised him that Ron was sometimes so insecure about his place in Harry's life, but then, Ron had said that he still thought of the way he had left Harry and Hermione during the Horcrux quest. That wasn't something Harry ever dwelled on. "I'm not," he said. "I'm trying to come up with a way to show him that you're all important to me, without teaching him to have unrealistic expectations about what would happen if he demanded that I get rid of you."

"Or getting rid of your pride, I hope." Ron eyed him carefully. "It feels like he doesn't want to be caught, mate, no matter how hard you run."

"I know," Harry said. "But I can't be sure of that until I've really _tried. _I think he does want to be chased. If he doesn't want me to try at all, then he could have sent me a letter saying that, and I would have given up."

"Really?" Ron grinned. "Maybe he's afraid you'd think the letter was a hopeful sign."

Harry shrugged. He couldn't deny that, with as hard as he was trying to get through Draco's protections right now. "That could be, but as it is, silence doesn't tell me anything, whether he's irritated or indifferent or hoping himself."

Ron had to agree about that, and he pressed Harry's shoulder sympathetically with one hand before he left the office. Still, he was snickering, and Harry heard that before he got out the door. He called after him, "What's so funny?"

Ron turned back, grinning and shaking his head. "I told you that you would need someone who presented a challenge!" he called. "God forbid that anyone you Court or chase or fall in love with be _easy._"

He managed to vanish while Harry was still deciding what to throw.

* * *

Harry was tired. There were lots of causes for that—he was beginning to think that he would never reach Draco no matter what he did, and Binks was demanding his first "report" on Ron, and Hermione had experienced a slight scare earlier that day when she thought she was miscarrying, although she'd been fine—but still, they all built up into the single fact of his exhaustion as he sat in front of the fire that evening with his head in his hands.

No matter how he thought about it, there was always a problem. He couldn't give up his friends, but it seemed like that was the only thing that would make Draco happy. He could tell Draco that he'd thought about it and decided the Courting was the _real _reason for him to destroy Binks, but then he would be lying. He could tell Draco that Draco was the most important person in the world to him and _that _might be true, but Draco seemed disinclined to believe it as long as Harry was still worried about Ron.

Ron could be right. Someone whom Harry was working so hard to please without success was probably not worth it. Harry could empty his vaults in buying gifts and his desk of parchment in sending letters, but Draco would never respond and never look back. Maybe Harry should stop bothering him, too. That was what the silence probably meant: Draco had withdrawn into his shell and was waiting for Harry to get the message.

Their final row had been so _stupid_. That was what bothered Harry. If they'd fought for a real reason that proved they were incompatible, like Draco wanting Harry to do illegal things for him, that would be one thing. Harry could let him go then—with regret, yes, but not with any desire to get back together with him.

Well, without _much _desire, anyway.

Instead, it was a stupid reason, a stupid problem, and one that Harry could think of no way to solve.

_You'd think what he wanted was to watch me tell off Binks for his sake, and somehow make it clear that it wasn't just about Ron at the same time, _Harry thought in irritation, leaning back in his chair and trying to massage away the headache that had arisen in the front of his skull. _To give him an invitation to the meeting I'm going to have with Binks when I tell him off—_

Harry's eyes popped open.

_Careful, careful, _he told himself immediately, as excitement bubbled through his mind. _It might not be right. It might not be _possible. _It might not be the best gift you could give him, or he might not want it if you did._

But the longer Harry thought about it, the more perfect it seemed. Draco had essentially complained that Harry wasn't standing up for him the right way, that he wanted some assurance Binks would be punished for the Courting as well as for trying to make Harry spy on Ron. There was no way that Harry, having admitted the one motive, could convince him the other was still important—unless he showed him.

Of course, getting Draco to see that would be a challenge, since he had so thoroughly cut off communication and Harry couldn't exactly abduct him and bring him to the Ministry. But Harry thought he could handle the challenge. Ron was right. A too-easy relationship filled him with worries, a too-hard one made him brood, but hand him a difficult thing to do and his mind boiled with ways to get around it.

_The method we used in the Gauri case, _he told himself, with a smile. _Yes. We absolutely had to confront him with a scene that would cause him to crack, and we managed it. And I already know that the wards above Malfoy Manor are weaker than the others. I reckon Draco hardly thinks that someone's going to attack his Owlery._

Plus, the plan Harry had just hatched gave him the chance for a little personal revenge, which he was not about to turn down.

He spent the rest of the evening planning, and only went to bed at midnight because he knew he would be useless at casting the spells if he didn't get some rest. But then he was up again at three, staring at a book he hadn't opened since the Gauri case and practicing the incantations until they burned on his lips and the back of his eyelids.

Then he took his broom and flew to Malfoy Manor.

* * *

The white owl might be smart, but it was still only a bird. When Harry hovered on his broom beyond the Owlery and extended a hand with owl treats flavored like dead mice in it, it barely hesitated before it flew out and perched on his arm.

Harry promptly seized its neck and cast a spell on it that made it freeze in position. Its eyes fixed on him indignantly, and Harry thought it probably would have hooted, but the spell kept it from doing even that much.

"Listen to me," Harry whispered. "We're going to go on a little flight, and as long as you behave, everything will be all right. Try to bite me, and I'm going to have Quidditch gloves lined with owl feathers. I've heard that some people think they're good luck charms, and I doubt that anyone would object to the color. Understand?"

The owl might have tried to bite him, still, but it hunched down instead and sat there mute when he released it from most of the binding spell. Harry smiled, cast one more spell, and then slid down the broom and stared intently at the turtle-like web of wards over the Manor.

He was grateful for the years of experience he'd had in the Aurors, seeing and locating wards. It would have been difficult to find the faint blue lines at night otherwise. And he had to be aware of _exactly _where they were, or he was going to mess up the most vital part of the plan.

When he thought he had a good grasp on the gentle curve of the ward-dome and the way it rose, he began to fly. He was hanging from the broom, one arm curved around the shaft—while his hand clutched his wand—and the other arm dangling the owl, with its feet stuck firmly to his skin. Its wings hung free, which Harry needed them to, because he needed them to dip into the wards as if into a pool of water.

As they flew along, the owl's wings made the wards briefly blaze and then relax. Like all of Draco's birds, after all, it had permission to fly in and out. The wards weren't going to react to its presence with violence.

The last spell Harry had cast depended on that fact. The spell mixed with the wards, very slightly altering them, not making them less protective but making them capable of projecting the vision of a distant place when Harry called for it. No matter where Draco was in the house, as long as it was anywhere near the wards, he would see the vision.

And since he never seemed to leave, Harry thought a confrontation with Binks in the afternoon, projected to Draco through the wards so he could get an idea of what Harry wanted to do for him, would be just fine.

Harry had to fly all around the Manor and touch all the outer wards; the inner ones were beyond his power. But given that the Manor had so many windows and so many walls, it would be hard for Draco to be in a completely interior room. If he was, Harry thought he would still run into an outer one when he heard the sound of voices coming from the vision. Harry's was going to be one of those voices, and he would surely recognize it and want to know what Harry had done to pass his wards.

Finally, almost three hours later, Harry finished. He was near sunrise and also near exhaustion, so that the broom wobbled beneath him as he flew back to the Owlery. The white owl was beating its wings to get free now, and snapping its beak near his head. Harry was glad that he had carefully held his arm away from his body the whole way, and that he was such a good flyer, so that he didn't need two hands to control the broom.

"I told you that you would be Quidditch gloves if you moved," he told the owl.

It stopped moving. Harry laughed and cast the _Finite _that would release its feet from his arm. It took off and lifted its tail.

Harry managed to dodge the rain of shit that came down, but only because he had prior experience. "Getting predictable!" he called jauntily after the owl, and then flew in the direction of the Ministry. He could easily shrink the broom and store it in his office.

Now that he had the spell woven into Draco's wards, he could also wait and stage a confrontation with Binks later, if that was what he wanted, on a different day. That would give him more time to gather information about the man and prove that he was unfit for his post.

Harry consulted the state of his nerves and then snorted. Like he was going to be able to do _that_. And he was hardly going to depend on facts to force Binks out, anyway. It would be much more fun, and much more soothing to the excitement bouncing through his veins, if he acted today.

So he did.

* * *

"Sir? Can I speak with you a minute?"

As he stepped into the office, Harry moved his wand behind his back in the gesture of the spell that would trigger Draco's wards to start showing everything in Binks's office until he told them to stop. Binks didn't notice, because he'd had his head buried in papers when Harry stepped in. Harry had counted on that. If Binks had noticed, his paranoid nature would have rendered Harry's plan useless.

"Of course," Binks said, popping his head up and staring eagerly at him. "You have the first report on Weasley for me?"

Harry smiled, and knew it would look nasty. He'd counted on that, if not on the way Binks blinked and seemed as if he'd like to retreat for a moment. That was a bonus. "No, sir," he said cheerfully. "I've come to tell you to shove it up your arse, sir, all these stupid things that you've made me do."

Binks's mouth hung open. Harry laughed. How easy it was to surprise him. He seemed never to have considered that any of his subordinates might turn against him, despite the excellent reasons he'd offered.

"You will not say such things," Binks murmured when he had straightened up. "What stupid things have I made you do? I've made it possible for you to practice your _job_, and you should remember that, Auror Potter, if you don't want to find yourself on trial in front of the Wizengamot."

_Oh, this is too good. _Harry liked those words. They would make Draco see—or at least they should—that Harry was willing to risk a lot for him, and didn't care, that he would go ahead and do it anyway.

"Oh, let's see," Harry said, and began to tick off the points on his fingers. "You made me engage in a Courting when you knew that I would have to lie and Court Draco Malfoy in bad faith. You encouraged me to continue with the Courting despite my doubts. You told me that there was no other way I could do the work, even when I offered alternative plans. You were anxious not to contact Mr. Malfoy directly, feeling that there was no way that he would cooperate with the Aurors, but you never offered him the _choice_. You told me that the Auror Department would compensate me for the gifts I bought, and you approved my letters, therefore assuring that it wasn't a true Courting, but only something initiated at your request." Harry laid his hands on Binks's desk and leaned forwards to get into his face. "The fact that the Courting also allowed me to find the man I love is beside the point. You were still wrong."

_Are you listening, Draco? _Harry thought into the ringing silence that succeeded that. _I hope you're listening._

Binks cleared his throat. "Malfoy had a piece of Voldemort in his house, Auror Potter—"

"But you assumed bad faith from the start," Harry cut in, this time loading his words with quiet menace. "You assumed that he knew and was trying to hide it, not that a parent or even a visitor was involved somehow. Hence why you forbade me to contact him in an open and honest manner. I knew that using the Courting like that was wrong. It's a pure-blood rite, special and sacred to them. I should have been stronger, yes, but that doesn't lessen the wrong that you did by demanding I perform it in the first place."

Binks had his hands on his chair now, leaning back from Harry and looking as though he needed the support. "No one is going to believe you," he said, rallying a bit. "No one will think that I forced you to do this."

"Ron saw the first letter," Harry said calmly. "He warned me that I was getting too deep, that I had too much emotion towards Draco already then, and I didn't listen. But he'll testify that I wrote it, and wrote it at your instigation."

"Of course your friend Weasley will say whatever you want him to say," Binks said bitterly. "You're both traitors together, aren't you?"

"Neither of us is a traitor to anything except your bigoted conception of the world," Harry said. His heart was pounding hard enough to make him sway in place, and it looked as though the room was changing into a spinning smear of colors that made him want to fall over. But he couldn't faint yet. He wouldn't faint. He would keep on speaking, and make Binks understand, and offer the same chance to Draco, though it was anyone's guess if he would take it. "Ron has wished me well in loving Draco, by the way." There. That ought to give Draco something else to think about.

"You don't agree that Mr. Weasley is a traitor?" Binks had seized on that out of everything Harry had said and seemed determined to worry it to death.

"No, I don't," Harry said. "And I don't see how you came up with that conclusion just because he's _cheerful_." Then he paused and shook his head. "Ah, but wait. You're the same one who came up with the conclusion that Draco had to be just like his parents. I can see the connection all too clearly now that I think about it."

Binks's face turned red. "I could sack you, Potter," he threatened.

"Right," Harry said, nodding. "You could. But I would fight it, and what would you give as a reason? That I found someone and fell in love because of a Courting that shouldn't have been done in the first place, but which you _ordered _me to do? That I refused to spy on my best friend because you wanted me to? That I didn't obey someone who's nothing more than a jumped-up little toad of a Wizengamot member's family?"

Binks took a step forwards, clutching his wand. Harry raised his wand and waited, although he held it deliberately low enough that anyone viewing this as a Pensieve memory in the future should be able to see he wouldn't have actually hurt Binks.

"Get _out!_" Binks screamed. "You're no longer an Auror!"

Harry grinned, bowed, and trotted out of the office, ducking the curse that sizzled into the door near the back of his head. That would make excellent viewing for the Wizengamot, too, or whoever actually ended up trying the case.

In the meantime, he had accomplished what he wanted to. He had declared his love for Draco publically—sort of—and he had showed Draco that wanting to protect him was a reason for Harry to fight. And he'd admitted his tangled motives in the Courting, all over again. He would stand by the declarations he had made here, that he was in love with Draco, whether or not Draco wanted to reveal his own feelings.

_Whatever they are. What if this doesn't work?_

Harry tossed the notion away as soon as it entered his mind. He would find a way around that obstacle, too, because he felt that, at the moment, he could fight his way past anything.

* * *

This time, when he Apparated to Malfoy Manor, the wards permitted him to land inside on the lawn. Harry closed his eyes to savor that before he opened them and saw the distant figure running madly towards him from the doors of the Manor.

Draco's blond hair blew around his face, which was pale and full of an emotion that Harry knew very well. He clasped Draco in his arms as they came together and spun him around, laughing, until the expression of fear and worry melted into irritation and Draco dug his heels into the ground, bringing them to a forceful stop.

"The fuck is going on?" Draco screamed into his face. "How the fuck did you do that? Do you know you just lost your job? Are you _mental_?"

"Quite possibly!" Harry yelled back. The wind seemed to pick up his words and toss them away, but that was all right; Harry knew what he was saying, after all. "I got past the wards with an Auror trick! But I'm not an Auror anymore! That's all right! I love you! I may possibly have had almost no sleep last night!"

Draco, being Draco, focused on the last words and nothing else. He was kind of like Binks that way, Harry thought hysterically. Draco would kill him if he said that aloud. He probably shouldn't. "So this is all the result of sleep-deprivation?" Draco demanded, and started fighting to be free of Harry's embrace.

Harry stepped back, releasing Draco, which put him off-balance, and then knelt on the ground in front of him and grabbed his hands. No matter how much Draco struggled, Harry refused to let him go, gazing soulfully up at him instead. He knew it was soulful, and knew that Draco would have the right to despise him, and didn't care. The whirling smear of colors had become nothing but Draco's face.

"Listen to me!" Harry said. "I love you. I love you because you trusted me, and took a chance despite all the chances in the world being against you. I love you because you haven't let yourself get into a rut when you _could_, with all those parties all the time, and no one would have blamed you. I love you because you can control your emotions and let them go at the same time, which is something I've always had trouble with. I love you because you're proud and touchy and you glow under your clothes. I love you because you want me. I love you because you confront me sometimes and you retreat sometimes and you're contradictory, like a real person. I love you for your stupid owl and your stupid sensitivity and your stupid clothes. I love you."

Draco stared down at him with his mouth open. Harry looked back. "I'm going to keep chasing you until you tell me to go away," he finished. "If you don't, then I'll just keep pushing forwards. Why not? Why not? I want you, I love you, and there's no reason that I should allow little things like wards to stand in the way."

Draco swallowed. "But my word would be enough to stand in the way?" he asked carefully.

"Yes," Harry said. "Your unambiguous word, saying that you didn't want me. Because this is based on my desire for your desire. If you don't want me, then the deal's off and I'll walk away." And at that moment, he thought he might be able to, to rise to his feet in the clear day and walk off.

If Draco would say that he didn't want him. If Draco would only be this open and honest, one last time.

Draco's hands fell to frame Harry's face. Then he shook his head. "You don't fight fair," he said.

"I tried to give you every chance to refuse," Harry began indignantly.

"No," Draco said, softly and fiercely enough to make Harry shut up. "Not that. I wouldn't say _that _unless I meant it," he added in a tone of disgust. "I mean that you're my fantasy, and when your fantasy comes after you and hunts you down and declares that you're his fantasy in front of the Head Auror and anyone who might have been listening at the door, how are you supposed to refuse?"

"And in front of you," Harry said. "That was the whole point."

"I know," Draco said, and dragged him to his feet. "I'm not going to be easy, you know. I'll probably still get jealous of Weasley sometimes." His eyes flashed, and then the line of his jaw softened a little. "Though I got the point of the display in front of the Head Auror, and how Weasley wasn't the only reason you went up against him."

"I'm yours," Harry said. "For everything I can give you."

"You had better not lie to me again," Draco said softly, with no humor. "You had better not fuck up in the same way again, by putting something else—the Ministry, your friends, your job—in front of me without telling me. Now that I know more about you, I'll _hurt _you if you do that."

Harry nodded. "I know." He waited, but Draco seemed content to gaze at his face. Harry cleared his throat. "Um, can I have that kiss now?"

Draco sighed and rolled his eyes, but did lean in. Harry seized his shoulders and kissed as hard as he could, driving his tongue straight into Draco's teeth, and then into _his _tongue and his gums and his cheeks. He might know a lot about Draco, but he didn't know everything there was to know, and that included his taste.

"We'll have to _try_," Draco said, when he pulled back. "This isn't settled or resolved."

"If it was, one of us would be dead," Harry said, and thought, _There. That's the reason he's different from all the others, the reason I'll never grow bored with him. Because things are always changing, with him. I can never be the same from day to day. I can never be safe._

Being safe was overrated, Harry thought as he caressed Draco's face and learned the shape of his chin and his nose. He was Harry bloody Potter. Of course he couldn't have a safe love affair.

"I do love you, you know," he felt compelled to whisper.

Draco nodded and smiled. "I know. I—think I feel the same. It's just a little too confusing right now to tell."

In time, he would feel the same, completely, Harry knew. In time Harry would get his job back, and maybe move into Malfoy Manor, and maybe even gain the white owl's liking and respect—on the same day that Draco and Ron got along without jealousy. It would come in time.

So much would.

**The End.**


End file.
